Reading Comprehension

PT139 · S2 · P2 · Q9 The Waggle Dance

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

  • Save & drill this skill — build targeted practice sets from questions like this one

  • Video walkthroughs — watch every question solved step by step

  • 81 official LSATs — as questions, timed sections & full-length tests

Start practicing free

Passage A In ancient Greece, Aristotle documented the ability of foraging honeybees to recruit nestmates to a good food source.

Topic

Communication among animals—especially the mechanisms, symbolism, and interpretation of honeybee dances, and examples of symbolic animal communication more broadly.

Framework

Answer / Explain (both passages focus on explaining how honeybees communicate the location of food sources, while Passage B also situates this in the broader context of animal symbolic communication)

Main Point

**Passage A:** The main point is that researchers have uncovered that honeybees communicate the location of food sources to nestmates through dancing that utilizes low-frequency sounds, rather than odors, to convey information. (Best encapsulated in the final sentences: ) Passage B: The main point is that some animals, such as bees and vervet monkeys, communicate symbolically (with bees’ dance conveying complex info about food), but animals do not blindly follow symbolic signals—they interpret them in context. (The Most Valuable Sentence is: )

P1 (Passage A): Early Discoveries about Bee Communication

Scientists have been fascinated by how bees communicate food locations since ancient Greece, with Aristotle observing dancing bees. Later, in the 1940s, von Frisch cracked the dance code, realizing bees were conveying specific information, but the details of *how* they transmitted this info were still unclear.

P2 (Passage A): Search for the Physical Mechanism—Sound or Smell?

The 1960s brought discoveries about the actual signals bees use: researchers noticed bees make low-frequency sounds while dancing. Although initially dismissed (since many believed bees couldn't hear), Wenner suggested odors, not sounds, might be the crucial info source. The debate was unresolved.

P3 (Passage A): Evidence for the Importance of Sound, Not Odor

Further research proved bees can direct nestmates to food sources they themselves hadn't visited—impossible if scent was necessary. Experiments with a dancing honeybee robot confirmed that dance-emitted sounds are indeed essential for communicating food locations.

9.

Which one of the following statements most accurately characterizes a difference between the two passages?

  1. Correct

    Passage A is concerned solely

    Why this is right

    This looks good. Passage A only talks about honeybees, whereas passage B also talks about ants, fish, and vervet monkeys.

    Skill tested: Method · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    88% picked this

  2. Passage A discusses evidence adduced

    Contradicts Passage B

    Both passages indicate specific evidence adduced by the scientists in the studies. Passage B gets into the specifics of Gould's study. Gould's claim: bees do not automatically follow just any information The support adduced by Gould: they trained some bees to find food in a boat in the middle of the lake, but other bees wouldn't accept directions to the boat-food because it seemed too implausible that food would be there. (by the way -- I had never seen the word 'adduced' before this answer choice, and have never seen it since. It apparently means 'cited as evidence'. Lawyers adduce evidence to try to support the verdict they're arguing for.)

    5% picked this

  3. Passage B is entirely about

    Too Strong: entirely

    This answer seems somewhat tempting, since Passage A goes back as far as Aristotle (more than 2000 years ago), whereas Passage B seems to only go as far back as the 1940s (von Frisch). But is it fair to say that 1940s are recent theories of honeybee communication? That only sounds recent because Aristotle was brought up so in comparison it's recent. But if you asked anyone on the street, "Is a study from 1940 a recent study?", they would say "no." So Passage B is not entirely recent studies. Also, its second paragraph outlines historic development: "von Frisch was the first ... Wenner and others believed X, but this has turned out not to be so"

    3% picked this

  4. Passage B is concerned with

    Weak Matches

    Passage A does not ever explicitly make a distinction between symbolic and nonsymbolic. It is primarily concerned with whether the mechanism by which honeybees communicate is smell or sound, but that's not a distinction between symbolic and nonsymbolic, It also feels weakly true to say Passage B is concerned with explaining the distinction between the two forms. Was there any explanation? There is just an intro sentence saying, "All animals communicate, but some communicate symbolically." What's the difference between symbolic and nonsymbolic? Passage B never explains. It just starts providing examples of symbolic communicators.

    3% picked this

  5. Passage B is concerned with

    Out of Scope: insight into humans

    Passage B never tries to turn its discussion towards implications about human communication. In fact, humans are never mentioned in the passage (primates are, of which humans are one type, but that certainly doesn't count).

    0% picked this

Continue the review in LSAT Lab

Save this question, watch the video walkthrough, and drill similar questions in your LSAT Lab account.

Save and practice this skill
LSAT Lab

Turn this review into a targeted study plan.

Save this question, drill more like it, watch the video walkthrough, and track your progress in your LSAT Lab account.

Start practicing free