Termination w.r.t. Q of the given QTRS could be proven:

(0) Obligation:

Q restricted rewrite system:
The TRS R consists of the following rules:

zeros → cons(0, n__zeros)
tail(cons(X, XS)) → activate(XS)
zeros → n__zeros
activate(n__zeros) → zeros
activate(X) → X

Q is empty.

(1) QTRSRRRProof (EQUIVALENT transformation)

Used ordering:
Recursive Path Order [RPO].
Precedence:

tail₁ > [zeros, activate₁] > cons₂
tail₁ > [zeros, activate₁] > 0
tail₁ > [zeros, activate₁] > n_zeros

With this ordering the following rules can be removed by the rule removal processor [LPAR04] because they are oriented strictly:

zeros → cons(0, n__zeros)
tail(cons(X, XS)) → activate(XS)
zeros → n__zeros
activate(n__zeros) → zeros
activate(X) → X

(2) Obligation:

Q restricted rewrite system:
R is empty.
Q is empty.

(3) RisEmptyProof (EQUIVALENT transformation)

The TRS R is empty. Hence, termination is trivially proven.

(4) TRUE