TOEFL Listening

🎧 Listening Transcript

Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class. The professor is discussing the behavior of honeybees. 'Today, I want to talk about how honeybees communicate information about food sources. You might have heard of the famous 'waggle dance.' When a worker bee discovers a rich nectar source, she returns to the hive and performs this dance on the vertical surface of the honeycomb. The dance consists of a figure-eight pattern, with a straight run in the middle. The angle of this straight run relative to vertical indicates the direction of the food source in relation to the sun. For example, if the bee runs straight up, that means the food is directly toward the sun. The duration of the waggle run conveys the distance. But here's an interesting twist: recent research suggests that the dance is not just about direction and distance. The bee also adjusts the intensity of the dance based on the quality of the food. A richer sugar solution produces a more vigorous dance, which recruits more foragers. So, the dance is a sophisticated signal that encodes multiple layers of information, allowing the colony to efficiently allocate its foraging efforts.'