UPSC Prelims 2023 Q15: Waggle Dance in Insects — Explained
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?
- Butterflies
- Dragonflies
- Honeybees
- Wasps
Answer: (c) Honeybees
Statement-wise explanation
- a: incorrect — Butterflies are solitary insects. They have no hive or colony and no foragers that recruit nestmates. Each butterfly finds nectar on its own, using sight and smell, so it has no reason to tell others where food is.
- b: incorrect — Dragonflies are solitary predators. They catch other insects in flight and do not collect food to bring back to a nest. Without a nest or colony there is nobody to recruit, so they have no dance language.
- c: correct — A honeybee forager that has found a good food source comes back to the hive and performs the waggle dance on the vertical comb. The angle of the waggle run from the vertical shows the angle between the food and the sun. How long the waggle run lasts shows how far away the food is. Karl von Frisch worked this code out and shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for it.
- d: incorrect — Social wasps do live in colonies. However, they do not perform a dance that encodes the direction and distance of food. The waggle dance with that symbolic code is a feature of honeybees (genus Apis).
How to eliminate
Ask which animal needs to share where food is. That only makes sense for a social insect whose foragers bring food back to a shared nest. Butterflies and dragonflies are solitary, so they drop out at once. That leaves wasps and honeybees, which are both social. To choose between them you have to know the fact. The waggle dance, discovered by Karl von Frisch, is honeybee communication. Remember it as: angle on the comb = direction relative to the sun; length of the waggle run = distance.
Know more
Bee dance language
Forager honeybees (Apis) tell their nestmates where to find nectar and pollen by dancing on the vertical honeycomb inside the dark hive. Karl von Frisch decoded this in the mid-20th century. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen, the founders of ethology (the study of animal behaviour).
| Dance | When used | What it tells |
|---|---|---|
| Round dance | Food close to the hive (within about 75 m, per von Frisch) | "Food is nearby, search around"; little information on direction |
| Waggle dance | Food farther away | Direction and distance |
How the waggle dance works
- The bee runs straight ahead while waggling its abdomen. Then it loops back to the start, first on one side and then the other, so its path looks like a figure eight.
- Direction: the angle of the waggle run measured from vertical ("up" on the comb) equals the angle of the food source measured from the sun's direction. A run straight up means "fly towards the sun".
- Distance: the longer the waggle run lasts, the farther away the food is. Recent studies find this relationship is not linear.
- Bees following the dancer also pick up the scent of the flowers, which helps them find the right ones.
Why it matters for UPSC
- It is a classic example of symbolic communication in animals.
- Honeybees are key pollinators, which links this topic to ecosystem services, beekeeping (apiculture) and the "Sweet Revolution" (National Beekeeping & Honey Mission).
- India has native honeybees (Apis cerana, A. dorsata, A. florea) and the introduced European bee (A. mellifera). All of them use dance communication.