Codes and messages

A honeybee that finds flowers flies back to the hive. Inside, in the dark, it does a special dance on the comb. Other bees follow the dancer closely and feel the dance. The dance tells them the direction of the flowers and how far away they are. The bees then fly out and find the flowers, without having seen them. The dance is a signal made of movement. We cannot give the exact rule here, so we will play a classroom code game: walking toward the window means the flowers are toward the window; a short walk means near and a long walk means far. Nature also gives ideas to engineers. Because bats use echoes, engineers made a cane for people who cannot see. It sends out sound, listens for the echoes from things in the way, and makes the handle vibrate under the user’s thumb to warn of an obstacle.