A Figure-Eight That Is Also a Language
When a scout honeybee finds a good food source and returns to the hive, she doesn't rest. She pushes onto the vertical surface of the honeycomb and begins a run: a straight line with her abdomen vibrating rapidly, then a loop to the left, another straight run, a loop to the right. The figure-eight repeats, sometimes dozens of times, while other bees cluster around her and follow her movements with their antennae pressed close. This is the waggle dance, and it is one of the only known examples of symbolic communication in an invertebrate, a system where one animal uses an abstract signal to convey specific information about a location it cannot see from where it stands.
