A shared sky

The Bee's Dance Map

How can a dance be a map?

Generated interpretation

The Sun moves. A living compass has to keep time, or morning and afternoon will disagree.

Listen, or read

The words

A forager comes home and walks a figure on the comb: a straight waggle, a loop, the waggle again. The angle of the waggle is the angle of the food against the Sun. The length of the waggle is the distance of the flight. A dance can be a map.

A forager comes home. On the dark vertical comb she walks a figure: a straight waggle, then a loop, then the waggle again.

The other bees follow her with their antennae. They are reading a message.

The message is a place in the world, translated into an angle against the Sun.

What we know

Evidence, held lightly

We know

The waggle dance encodes direction relative to the Sun and distance as duration.

Nestmates use that information to find the site.

The evidence suggests

Odor and dance work together, and their weights shift with landscape.

We are still figuring this out

How precisely a naive bee converts the dance into a first flight.

Try this

A child can try this

Point with the Sun

Stand in a yard. Point at something far: a tree, a chimney. Now point at the Sun. The angle between your arms is the kind of angle a bee can dance. You do not need to dance it. Notice that the sky can be a shared ruler.

Also nearby

A question to carry outside

What else in nature is a message, not only a movement?