" Honeybees are known to communicate in a dance language called the waggle dance to point out the location of resources that keep the hive alive, but new research reveals that gravity can mess with this dance's accuracy.
The waggle dance is an important part of how they provide for the bee community. Foragers go out, find food, water or other resources, and come back to signal the location to the rest of hive to go out and harvest.
The dance signals the direction of the food patch in relation to the sun, which is always interpreted by the other bees as straight up (regardless of where it is in the sky). If the dancing bee positions its body straight up, that indicates to the other bees to fly straight toward where the sun is on the horizon. If the dancer angles her body with face pointing down toward the ground, which means the food patch is located directly opposite the sun's position on the horizon.When bees signaled angles close to the horizon, like 90 or 270 degrees, they seemed to have much more trouble staying on point than when walking directly up or down. The researchers think that horizontal angles are more difficult because the bees need to work against gravity to stay in a straight line."
How Gravity Messes with Honeybees' Waggle Dance
By Jennifer Welsh | LiveScience.com
The waggle dance is an important part of how they provide for the bee community. Foragers go out, find food, water or other resources, and come back to signal the location to the rest of hive to go out and harvest.
The dance signals the direction of the food patch in relation to the sun, which is always interpreted by the other bees as straight up (regardless of where it is in the sky). If the dancing bee positions its body straight up, that indicates to the other bees to fly straight toward where the sun is on the horizon. If the dancer angles her body with face pointing down toward the ground, which means the food patch is located directly opposite the sun's position on the horizon.When bees signaled angles close to the horizon, like 90 or 270 degrees, they seemed to have much more trouble staying on point than when walking directly up or down. The researchers think that horizontal angles are more difficult because the bees need to work against gravity to stay in a straight line."
How Gravity Messes with Honeybees' Waggle Dance
By Jennifer Welsh | LiveScience.com
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