Kind: captions
Language: en
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to the untrained eye this swarm of bees
looks like a mass of squirming bugs but
a closer inspection reveals something
amazing going on and it has a crazy name
wait wait did I just hear a scientist
say waggle dances
yes Tom cely is a b expert at Cornell
University and he's about to show me one
of the most famous animal languages in
the natural world world as she Waggles
she's indicating the direction and
distance to a potential home site to all
of the other bees that you see tripping
around behind her what that's it's just
vibrating dude how can that bee
communicate something so specific just
by shaking its little be butt as it
turns out a few Wiggles of those striped
butts can say a lot the wagle dance is
the way bees communicate with each other
and its Discovery in the 1940s was so
astounding it won a Nobel Prize that
kind of ability is very very special you
and I can do it and bees can do it but
there're almost almost no other species
on the planet that can do that bees use
the waggle dance to communicate the
precise location of food sources and
home sites to their hive mates see this
yellow painted bee here see how every
time she Wiggles she's facing the same
direction she's actually pointing her
Hive baits in the direction to fly
relative to the Sun to find a home site
and the length of time she spends
wiggling is how far to
fly about a half second of dancing
equals a half kilm of flight
distance it's one of the few animal
languages ever decoded and our host
David POG is about to become fluent aha
this looks like one of your grad student
slaves D hi Michael all right so how
exactly does the waggle dance work so
the waggle dance will work with a waggle
run which will point the direction of
the box that you prefer that you visit
and you like and if it's a a Nite that's
a short distance she'll do a short
waggle if it's a long distance she'll do
a much longer waggle but the actual
pointing of the waggle will show where
the nest box actually is so she gets two
things out of it direction and distance
well first you need your uh your bee
goggles uh to make it really
professional to protect us from the
harmful rays of anyone watching us I
will be doing this you don't think this
is a job that are left to the pros no no
this is going to be this is a job for
all worker
honeybees so here we go going to shake
my money maker and I'm going to make it
happen so here we go get ready you know
loosen it up we're shake it and then
come back
around and then shake it and then we'll
come back around and that's a that's a
circuit right there okay so shake it
waggle come back
around and
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dude did you say you're in graduate
school yeah I really don't know how that
happened
yeah