The Dance Language of Honeybees Is Sloppy

"Dance like nobody's watching" is fine advice, unless somebody is watching, and she needs to translate your dance steps into instructions to find food. That's the case for honeybees. But even though the rest of the colony must interpret their dance moves carefully, it turns out honeybees are pretty sloppy dancers. When honeybees return to the hive after finding nectar or other food, they famously do a "waggle dance" to tell their sisters where the food was. The waggle is a shimmying run that the bee repeats over and over on a vertical comb inside the hive. The angle of her run, compared to vertical, tells the other bees which direction to fly in (compared to the direction of the sun). And the length of the run tells them how far to go. You'd think these dances would be precisely calibrated, since bees use them to keep the whole colony ...