托福听力

🎧 听力原文

Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class. Professor: Today we’re talking about animal communication, and specifically about the honeybee’s famous waggle dance. You might know that honeybees perform a figure-eight dance to tell other bees where to find food. But did you know that the dance also conveys the quality of the food source? The speed and vigor of the dance, the number of repetitions, and even the sound produced during the dance all carry information. For example, a bee that finds a rich nectar source will perform a more intense, longer dance. That encourages more followers to visit that site. But here’s an interesting twist: when the food source is less profitable, the bee dances more slowly and for a shorter time, and often includes a ‘stop signal’—a brief vibrational pulse—which seems to discourage other bees from going there. This suggests that bees are not just sending a simple location message, but also evaluating and relaying the cost-benefit of the food source. So, the waggle dance is really a sophisticated decision-making tool for the colony.