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 & explanation
Answer: (c) Honeybees
The waggle dance is the honeybee's way of telling hive-mates where food lies. Karl von Frisch decoded it and shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this work.
- ✓ (c) A forager returning from a source more than about 50 m away runs a straight line on the vertical comb while wagging her abdomen; the angle of that run shows the direction relative to the sun, and the vigour of wagging signals distance.
- ✗ (d) Wasps are social insects too, but they do not use a symbolic dance to point nestmates to food.
- ✗ (a) Butterflies are solitary foragers and have no dance language for sharing the location of nectar.
Remember · Honeybees: round dance for food close to the hive, waggle dance for food farther away (direction relative to the sun plus distance). Decoded by Karl von Frisch (Nobel 1973).
Sources
- NobelPrize.org, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1973, press release ↗ “If the source of honey is situated at a distance more than about 50 m from the hive, the returning bee performs a “waggle dance” instead. … The direction of the straight distance informs the hive bees about the direction of the honey source relative to the position of the sun”
Question and answer: UPSC's official GS Paper I (2023, Series A) — paper ↗ · answer key ↗. Explanation: Minimalist IAS, checked 30 Sept 2026 (how we verify). ·