Gardner has discovered nothing new. It is well known that all forms of
honeybee-dances, starting with round dances, (and even round dances with 2,
or more circles, before the dancer reverses direction), through sickle
waggle-dances, through figure-eight waggle-dances, to figure-S dances, are
all variations on one and the same theme. The dances gradually change from
one form to another, as the distance of the foragers'-feeder, (and
consequently also dance-speed), changes.
Contrary to Gardner, (as I had realized years ago), round dances, even
without a trace of a waggle, *do* contain *both* distance information, and
direction information, just like all other dances. V. Frisch never suspected
that, because for sickle-dances, and figure-eight dances, he always drew 2
consecutive dance-circuits, but for round dances, he drew only slightly more
than a single dance-circuit.waggle-dances. I won't tell you how to extract
both distance & direction information from round dances, because I have
never even published that. But it is pretty easy to figure out how to do it,
if you draw 2 consecutive circuits for such dances too.
Not surprisingly, I usually find that what staunch DL supporters publish,
makes pretty boring reading!
--
Sincerely,
Ruth Rosin ("Prickly pear")
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