Read the passage and answer the questions given below it.
A forager bee that finds a field of mustard in flower has a problem, and it is not a problem of flying. She must tell her sisters where the field is. She must do it inside a hive that is nearly dark, on an upright wall of wax, with no map and no words.
Her answer is the waggle dance. She runs a short straight line across the comb, shaking her body from side to side, then loops back and repeats it. Two details carry the message. Straight up on the comb stands for the direction of the sun outside, so a run tilted forty degrees to the right of straight up means forty degrees to the right of the sun. The length of the run stands for distance: the farther the field, the longer the waggle. Her followers see very little in the dark, so they keep close and read the figure through their antennae. It is a remarkable piece of compression, a direction and a distance packed into a few seconds of shaking.
The Austrian zoologist Karl von Frisch worked this out over years of patient experiments, and in 1973 he shared a Nobel Prize for his studies of animal behaviour. In some quarters his account was met with incredulity. A few researchers argued that the recruits simply followed the scent of flowers clinging to the dancer, and that the dance was mere excited fuss. The objection was fair, and it led to sharper tests. Decades later, scientists fitted bees with tiny radar tags and tracked their flights. The recruits flew off in the direction the dance had shown, though scent helped them over the last stretch to the flowers.
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about how the dance is read?
Answer & explanation
Correct answer: option 3
The correct answer is Option (3) → A straight run pointing directly down the comb would send the recruits flying away from the sun.
The passage says that “straight up on the comb stands for the direction of the sun outside”.
- A run tilted forty degrees to the right of straight up means forty degrees to the right of the sun. So the angle from straight up equals the angle from the sun.
- Straight down is the exact opposite of straight up. So a run pointing straight down would mean the exact opposite of the sun’s direction, that is, directly away from it.
Why the Other Options are Incorrect?
Option 1: A forager whose waggle run is longer than usual has found an unusually rich patch of flowers. — Incorrect. Wrong link: The passage links the length of the run to distance: “the farther the field, the longer the waggle”. It says nothing about how rich the patch is.
Option 2: Bees in a hive with no light at all would be unable to pass on the direction of food. — Incorrect. Contradicted: The followers already “see very little in the dark”. They read the dance through their antennae, so they do not need light.
Option 4: Recruits rely chiefly on the dancer’s scent and treat the dance only as a signal to leave. — Incorrect. Contradicted: This was the view of the doubters. The radar studies found that the recruits flew in the direction the dance had shown, and scent helped only over the last stretch.