IELTS Reading 練習 2 蜜蜂如何導航（含題目+詳解）

How Bees Navigate

IELTS · 雅思備考 · 11 min read · 2026-04-25

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主題: How honeybees navigate over long distances
文章重點: Despite tiny brains, honeybees combine a sun compass, internal clock, optic-flow distance estimation, the waggle dance and landmark memory to forage accurately several kilometres from the hive.
難度: 進階 · Upper-Intermediate
建議時間: 18 分鐘

重要單字

forage — to search widely for food / 覓食
celestial — related to the sky or heavens / 天空的、天體的
polarisation — a pattern in light waves / 偏振
compass — a tool or sense used to find direction / 羅盤、方向感
optic flow — the rate at which visual features pass an eye / 光流（視覺移動率）
landmark — a noticeable feature used for orientation / 地標

30 秒快速理解 30-second summary

Honeybees fly several kilometres from the hive yet return precisely. They use the sun's position (detected through polarised UV light), an internal clock, the rate of visual flow past the eye to estimate distance, the waggle dance to share locations and remembered landmarks to correct errors. Together these layered systems allow a brain of fewer than a million neurons to navigate accurately.

逐段練習 Read paragraph by paragraph

1 段落 1 — A puzzle of scale

Honeybees routinely travel several kilometres from the hive in search of nectar, returning with remarkable accuracy to a fixed location. Given that a foraging bee's brain contains fewer than a million neurons — one ten-thousandth the number in a human brain — its navigational abilities have long puzzled biologists. Research over the past seventy years has revealed a layered system that combines celestial cues, internal rhythms, visual memory and social communication.

本段重要單字 (3)

forage — to search for food / 覓食
neuron — a brain cell that carries signals / 神經元
celestial — relating to the sky / 天空的

Quick Check · 隨堂小測

Why have biologists found bee navigation puzzling?

A. Bees rarely return to the hive successfully.
B. Bees navigate accurately despite very small brains.
C. Bees use only one sense to find their way.

看答案 · Show answer

答案：B — B. Bees navigate accurately despite very small brains.

The text contrasts a bee's tiny brain (fewer than a million neurons) with its impressive accuracy over kilometres — that mismatch is the puzzle.

2 段落 2 — How direction is fixed by the sun

The foundation of bee navigation is the sun compass. Even on partly cloudy days, bees can detect the polarisation pattern of ultraviolet light in patches of blue sky, allowing them to infer the sun's position. Because the sun moves across the sky during the day, bees also maintain an internal clock that adjusts this compass. Experiments in the 1950s by Karl von Frisch showed that bees trained to feed at a specific compass bearing in the morning continued to use the correct bearing in the afternoon, despite the sun having shifted.

本段重要單字 (3)

polarisation — an organised pattern in light / 偏振
infer — to work out from clues / 推斷
bearing — a direction relative to compass north / 方位

Quick Check · 隨堂小測

How can bees still find direction on a partly cloudy day?

A. They follow other bees that can see the sun.
B. They detect polarised UV light in patches of blue sky.
C. They navigate purely by smell when the sun is hidden.

看答案 · Show answer

答案：B — B. They detect polarised UV light in patches of blue sky.

The paragraph says bees "detect the polarisation pattern of ultraviolet light in patches of blue sky" to infer the sun's position even when clouds partly cover it.

3 段落 3 — Measuring distance through vision

Distance is measured not in metres but in optic flow — the rate at which visual features sweep past the bee's compound eye. A bee flying down a narrow tunnel overestimates distance because features pass quickly; in an open meadow, the same physical distance seems shorter. This rough measure is surprisingly reliable over the distances a bee typically travels, even though it depends on the surroundings rather than on any absolute unit.

本段重要單字 (3)

optic flow — rate at which visual features move / 光流
compound eye — an eye made of many tiny units / 複眼
overestimate — to judge as larger than it is / 高估

Quick Check · 隨堂小測

Why might a bee judge a tunnel to be longer than an equally long meadow?

A. The tunnel is darker, so the bee flies more slowly.
B. Visual features sweep past faster in the tunnel, inflating optic flow.
C. Bees use a different compass inside enclosed spaces.

看答案 · Show answer

答案：B — B. Visual features sweep past faster in the tunnel, inflating optic flow.

In a narrow tunnel "features pass quickly", so optic flow is higher and the bee overestimates distance — even when the actual length is the same as a meadow.

4 段落 4 — Decoding the waggle dance

Perhaps the most famous discovery is the waggle dance, performed on the vertical comb inside the hive. A returning forager traces a figure-of-eight, waggling her abdomen on the central run. The angle of this run, measured from vertical, encodes the direction of food relative to the sun; the duration of waggling encodes distance. Fellow workers decode the dance and fly to the indicated patch with errors of only a few metres even after journeys of over two kilometres.

本段重要單字 (3)

waggle — to move quickly from side to side / 搖擺
encode — to express information in a code / 編碼
forager — a worker that searches for food / 覓食者

Quick Check · 隨堂小測

What information does the angle of the waggle run convey?

A. The distance to the food source.
B. The direction of the food relative to the sun.
C. The amount of nectar available.

看答案 · Show answer

答案：B — B. The direction of the food relative to the sun.

"The angle of this run, measured from vertical, encodes the direction of food relative to the sun." Distance is encoded by the duration of waggling, not the angle.

5 段落 5 — Fine-tuning with visual landmarks

Navigation is refined by landmark memory. Bees learn prominent features — a dark rock, a clump of yellow flowers — during short orientation flights on first leaving the hive. These memories anchor the sun-compass estimate, correcting it when wind or overcast skies introduce error. The combination of celestial reference, optic-flow distance, social communication and landmark memory produces a navigation system that, layer by layer, compensates for the limitations of each part.

本段重要單字 (3)

landmark — a noticeable feature used to orient / 地標
prominent — easily noticed / 顯著的
overcast — covered with cloud / 陰天的

Quick Check · 隨堂小測

Why are landmark memories particularly useful on cloudy or windy days?

A. They replace the waggle dance entirely.
B. They correct errors in the sun-compass estimate.
C. They allow bees to fly without using their eyes.

看答案 · Show answer

答案：B — B. They correct errors in the sun-compass estimate.

The paragraph says landmarks "anchor the sun-compass estimate, correcting it when wind or overcast skies introduce error" — they fix mistakes in the celestial system.

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閱讀前先看 Before you read

30 秒快速理解 30-second summary

逐段練習 Read paragraph by paragraph

1 段落 1 — A puzzle of scale

2 段落 2 — How direction is fixed by the sun

3 段落 3 — Measuring distance through vision

4 段落 4 — Decoding the waggle dance

5 段落 5 — Fine-tuning with visual landmarks

每天 5 分鐘的系統練習

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