LING 1010 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Nim Chimpsky, Bird Vocalization, Waggle Dance

• School: UConn
• Department: Linguistics
• Course: LING 1010
• Professor: Akihiko Arano( T A)

Document Summary

Everybody agrees that animals have communication systems. Animal communication can be interspecific too (between species) We will look at bees, birds, and bonobos/chimpanzees. Female scout bees go out to look for pollen and nectar and after they find it they come back to their hives and tell the other bees about the food through dances. Other bees smell the nectar on the scout and then go out to try and find it. Waggle dance-used when the food is far. Straight section during which the bee waggles. Turn part where the bee loops around to get back to the beginning of the waggle pathway. Direction of the waggle portion of the dance relative to the vertical indicates the direction of the food relative to the sun. Length of time of the waggle portion indicates approximate distance. Energy of the waggle indicates the quality of the food source. The bee dance requires complex innate knowledge.