托福听力

🎧 听力原文

Listen to part of a lecture in a biology class. The professor is discussing animal communication. Professor: Today we're going to talk about how animals communicate, and I want to focus on a fascinating 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 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, it means the food is directly toward the sun. If the run is 45 degrees to the right of vertical, the food is 45 degrees to the right of the sun. The duration of the waggle run, on the other hand, communicates distance—the longer the run, the farther the food. But here's an interesting twist: the bees also adjust their dance based on the quality of the food. If the nectar is especially rich, the dance is more vigorous and repeated more times. So, this dance isn't just a simple message; it's a complex code that conveys multiple pieces of information.