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📌 The Question

Which of the following organisms perform waggle dance for others of their kin to indicate the direction and the distance to a source of their food?

(a) Butterflies
(b) Dragonflies
(c) Honeybees
(d) Wasps

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✅ Correct Answer: (c) Honeybees

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🧑‍🏫 Classroom Explanation

The waggle dance is a sophisticated symbolic communication system used exclusively by worker honeybees to inform other members of the hive about:

• Direction of food source
• Distance of food source

🔬 This behaviour was decoded by Karl von Frisch, for which he later received the Nobel Prize.

How the waggle dance works:

• 🧭 Direction:
  • Vertical upward movement → food source is towards the Sun
  • Angle of waggle relative to vertical → angle relative to Sun’s position
• 📏 Distance:
  • Duration of the waggle phase indicates how far the food source is

No other listed insects possess such a precise, encoded spatial language.

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⚡ Curiosity Raiser

Honeybees can communicate kilometre-level distances without maps, GPS, or sound.
What does that say about collective intelligence in nature?

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📚 Enrich Notes (UPSC Edge)

• Waggle dance is an example of ethology (study of animal behaviour)
• It is:
  • Species-specific
  • Learned + instinctive
• Frequently asked in UPSC under:
  • Animal behaviour
  • Ecology communication
  • Nobel-linked discoveries

🚫 Butterflies, dragonflies, and wasps do not perform waggle dances.

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🕊️ IAS Monk Whisper

“Nature speaks fluently — only the attentive learner understands the language.”