Nghe TOEFL

🎧 Bản ghi âm

Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class. The professor is discussing animal communication. Professor: Today we're going to talk about a fascinating aspect of animal behavior—communication. And I want to focus on one particular example: the waggle dance of honeybees. When a worker bee finds a good source of nectar, she returns to the hive and performs a dance. The dance conveys two key pieces of information: the direction and the distance of the food. The direction is indicated by the angle of the dance relative to the sun. For example, if she dances straight up, it means the food is directly toward the sun. If she dances at a 60-degree angle to the left, the food is 60 degrees to the left of the sun. The distance is communicated by the duration and speed of the dance. A faster, longer dance indicates a farther food source. Interestingly, the bee also adjusts the dance based on the quality of the food—richer nectar results in a more vigorous dance. So, the waggle dance is a remarkable example of symbolic communication, where a behavior stands for something else, much like human language.