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?

Answer: (c) Honeybees

A forager comes home and dances on the vertical comb. The angle of her waggle run from “straight up” is the angle of the food from the sun, and how long she waggles tells the distance.

The idea

Karl von Frisch decoded the dance and shared the Nobel Prize in 1973. For food very close to the hive, bees do a simpler round dance with no direction in it.

Scout finds flowers → Dances on the comb in the dark hive → Angle = direction from sun → Waggle time = distance → Sisters fly straight there

Why the others are wrong

(a) Butterflies forage alone and don’t recruit others to food.

(b) Dragonflies are predators that hunt alone on the wing.

(d) Social wasps live in colonies, but they don’t share food locations with a waggle dance.

The trap

Wasps look like bees and live in colonies. That look-alike is the trap. The dance is the honeybee’s own language.

Also know

A honeybee colony has a queen, female workers and male drones. Workers gather nectar and pollen; nectar becomes honey, while pollen provides protein. Pollination is the transfer of pollen from anther to stigma, not fertilisation itself. Bumblebees and many solitary bees are also important pollinators, even though they do not use the honeybee waggle dance.