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 explore how animals communicate, and I want to focus on a fascinating example: the honeybee's waggle dance. When a foraging bee returns to the hive, it performs a series of movements that convey information about the location of a food source. The dance consists of a straight run, during which the bee waggles its abdomen, followed by a turn to the right, then back to the straight run, and a turn to the left, forming a figure-eight pattern. The direction of the straight run relative to vertical indicates the angle of the food source relative to the sun. For instance, if the bee runs straight up, the food is directly toward the sun; if it runs straight down, the food is away from the sun. The duration of the waggle run indicates the distance—the longer the run, the farther the food. Interestingly, this dance is not innate; young bees learn it by observing older foragers. This discovery challenged earlier assumptions that all communication is purely instinctive. So, the dance is a remarkable example of symbolic communication in the animal kingdom.