US EditionHoney bees dance better with an audience
Honey bees adjust waggle dance precision based on audience size and engagement, showing less accuracy with fewer or immature followers, study finds.
9 Articles
9 Articles
It all depends on who's watching.
Bees dance better when they have more public, and do so with a surprising precision that completely changes the way we understand their communication, demonstrating that even in social insects the presence of observers can modify the quality of the message. The research, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), confirms that these variations are not anecdotal: when the number of spectators in the hive decreases, the i…
Honey bees dance better with an audience
Honey bees don’t just perform their famous waggle dance to share directions, they actually adjust how well they dance depending on who’s watching. Researchers found that when fewer bees pay attention, the dancer becomes less precise as it moves around trying to attract an audience. This means the dance is not simply a fixed message about food location, but a flexible performance shaped by social feedback.
‘Dance as if no one is watching,’ you often hear. But honeybees clearly don’t care about that. In fact, they dance better when someone is watching. New research shows that the industrious little creatures perform their famous waggle dance more sloppily when dealing with a small or uninterested audience. And that has […] More science? Read the latest articles on Scientias.nl.
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