托福听力

🎧 听力原文

Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class. Professor: So, we've been discussing animal communication, and today I want to focus on a fascinating example: the waggle dance of honeybees. When a worker bee discovers a good source of nectar, she returns to the hive and performs a series of movements on the vertical surface of the honeycomb. The dance consists of a figure-eight pattern, and the angle of the straight run relative to vertical indicates the direction of the food source relative to the sun. The duration of the waggle run, meanwhile, correlates with the distance to the food—the longer the run, the farther the source. But here's an interesting nuance: bees don't just communicate location; they also convey the quality of the food through the vigor of the dance. A richer nectar source results in more repetitions and a more enthusiastic performance. So, the waggle dance is not merely a directional signal, but a sophisticated message that includes both spatial and qualitative information, ensuring the colony's foraging efficiency.