Adaptive information and animal behaviour: why motorists stop at traffic lights

To behave in an adaptive way an animal must refer to information. Consider what happens when a motorist comes to traffic lights at red. The motorist usually stops. Stopping avoids the high risk of damage and injury at the cost of one or two minutes. So stopping at red traffic lights is the best way for the motorist to behave. There is a relation between the changing pattern of red, green and amber and the best thing to do. This relation is like an abstract signpost that implies what to do. Traffic lights imply and motorists infer. The information that means something is this 'traffic lights' kind of implication that in an abstract way points to the best way to behave. Information of this kind is adaptive information. Information varies in accuracy, may be unreliable and is often redundant. So how much is a good thing? The appendix proves mathematically that the more information an animal refers to, the closer to the adaptive way it can behave. Three major predictions follow. First, animals refer to all the information available; second, they ignore variables that have only a random association with adaptive behaviour; and third, they interpret information in an adaptive way. In evolutionary time the animal's characters that perceive and interpret its world could have evolved until the animal now does infer what the information implies, and selection ensures that this happens.