The honey bee waggle dance changes depending on its audience. A study just published in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that information encoding in the waggle dance is modulated by feedback from followers. If the followers were scarce, dancers became less precise. Also when the followers are young bees and not foragers, precision goes down.

According to the authors, the waggle dance is not just a message, it’s a two-way interaction between dancers and their followers. It is a real s a socially responsive process of the honey bee colony. A form of communication that is proving to be even more interesting and fascinating than previously thought.

Read the paper’s full text здесь.