Karl von Frisch
- Karl von Frisch deciphered much of the waggle dance's meaning.
- Karl von Frisch studied the waggle dance for 35 years.
Image courtesy of Bellarmine University Department of Biology
Karl von Frisch was born November 20, 1886, in Vienna. He studied at grammar school and later at the University of Vienna in medicine. He then switched to phylosophy and studied zoology in Munich and Vienna. In 1910, he received a doctorate from the University of Vienna and became an assistant at the University of Munich. In 1921, he attended the University of Rostock as a professor and director at the Zoology Faculty. In 1923, he moved to Breslau.
Karl von Frisch performed a series of observations to discover what the waggle dance, a bee flight pattern used for communication with other bees, of the bees was really used for. He discovered that it was used to communicate to the other bees where a nectar source was. The pioneer bee would fly in zig-zags then swoop around and fly in zig-zags again. The direction in which the zags pointed was the direction the source was.
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