Abstract
This study applies the information-theoretic measure of Non- Trivial Information Closure (NTIC) to quantify the autonomy of individual ants within a colony. We calculate the degree to which an ant’s future behavior is determined by its own past states versus being influenced by its local environment. Results show that individual ants exhibit consistent levels of autonomy across different timescales. This suggests that ant behavior reflects a non-trivial processing of both internal and external information, rather than being a simple reflexive response to stimuli. The approach demonstrates the utility of NTIC as a metric for assessing autonomy in complex biological systems. These findings lay the groundwork for future studies of autonomy and information processing in swarms.