TOEFL Listening

🎧 Listening Transcript

Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class. The professor is discussing animal communication. Professor: Today we're going to talk about the complex communication systems in animals, specifically focusing on the honeybee. You might think that bees just buzz around randomly, but they actually have a sophisticated way of sharing information about food sources. When a worker bee discovers a rich patch of flowers, it returns to the hive and performs what we call a 'waggle dance.' This dance isn't just for show; it conveys precise details. The angle of the dance relative to the sun indicates the direction of the food source. The duration of the waggle run—the straight part of the dance—tells the other bees the distance. For example, a longer waggle run means the food is farther away. Interestingly, the bees also account for the sun's movement across the sky, adjusting the angle over time. This dance is so accurate that other bees can find the exact location, sometimes kilometers away. Now, this discovery, made by Karl von Frisch in the 1940s, was initially met with skepticism. Many scientists doubted that insects could communicate such abstract information. But subsequent experiments confirmed it, and von Frisch later won a Nobel Prize for his work.