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Honeybee Communication Uses Vectors

Honeybees perform a dance, called the “waggle dance”. Using this dance (combined with olfactory cues) a foraging bee can tell her friends the distance and direction one must travel to find food. Distance and direction, hmm? Bees, like physics students, understand the usefulness of vectors.

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  1. // Reply

    I heard a scientist on the radio talk about how many different bees returning from foraging each do their wiggle dance and then somehow the colony as one unit decides which bee has the best spot. I wonder if they are solving vectors in order to find the best choice based on distance or if the pay-out is more prominent in their decision.

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