medium · Act reading
Honeybees communicate the location of food through a movement biologists call the waggle dance. A returning forager traces a figure-eight pattern on the comb, and the angle of its straight run relative to vertical encodes the direction of the food in relation to the sun, while the duration of the waggling indicates distance. Remarkably, bees adjust this angle over the course of the day to account for the sun's movement across the sky, even when they remain inside the dark hive and cannot see it. This suggests that the dance relies not merely on what a bee currently observes but on an internal sense of time the insect carries with it. The author includes the detail that bees adjust the dance even inside the dark hive mainly to:
- explain how the figure-eight pattern is physically traced on the comb.
- support the claim that the bees use an internal sense of time, not just direct observation.
- prove that bees can see the sun through the walls of the hive.
- show that the waggle dance communicates distance rather than direction.
Sign up free to see the explanation and track your rank →
More Act reading practice
- What is the main idea of the paragraph?
- Which of the following is the central point of the paragraph?
- Which choice best summarizes the main idea of the passage?
- What date was written on the map ?
- He had promised to light the signal lantern by dusk, but the fuel tin in the shed was near
- Critics of the new urban-greening initiative argued that planting trees along commercial c
- Read the following passage, then answer the question. When the lighthouse keeper retired a
- Read the following passage, then answer the question. The octopus is among the ocean's mos