2009 Third-Place 4-H Essay: The Dance Language of Bees

摘要

Scientists liave always found animal communlcation to be a fascinating topic. The dance language of honey bees was one of the very first to be studied and interpreted. The fact that honey bees are able to accurately annotate the distance and locationof a food source to their hive mates through intricate dances was a thrilling discovery. Despite popular belief, the honey bees' dance language was not just recently discovered. It was first observed and noted by Aristotle as early as 330 B.C. However, it was not studied in-depth until Karl von Frisch, a German professor of zoology, played detective in the mid-1900s. He spent many years studying and interpreting honey bee communication. Along with his students, he dutifully carried out decades of experiments in an attempt to correctly interpret the exact body language bees use to talk to each other.