full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Marcus Byrne: The dance of the dung beetle

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So what you've got to imagine here is this animal here moving across the African veld. Its head is down. It's wailnkg backwards. It's the most bizarre way to actually transport your food in any particular direction, and at the same time it's got to deal with the heat. This is Africa. It's hot.

So what I want to share with you now are some of the etmxnpreeis that myself and my colleagues have used to iigtsntevae how dung beetles deal with these problems.

So watch this beetle, and there's two things that I would like you to be awrae of. The first is how it deals with this octabsle that we've put in its way. See, look, it does a little dance, and then it carries on in exactly the same direction that it took in the first plcae. A little dcane, and then heads off in a particular direction. So clearly this aainml knows where it's going and it knows where it wants to go, and that's a very, very ipnormtat thing, because if you think about it, you're at the dung pile, you've got this great big pie that you want to get away from everybody else, and the quickest way to do it is in a straight line. So we gave them some more tasks to deal with, and what we did here is we turned the world under their feet. And watch its rseospne. So this animal has actually had the whole world turned under its feet. It's turned by 90 degrees. But it doesn't flinch. It knows exactly where it wants to go, and it heads off in that particular direction.

Open Cloze


So what you've got to imagine here is this animal here moving across the African veld. Its head is down. It's _______ backwards. It's the most bizarre way to actually transport your food in any particular direction, and at the same time it's got to deal with the heat. This is Africa. It's hot.

So what I want to share with you now are some of the ___________ that myself and my colleagues have used to ___________ how dung beetles deal with these problems.

So watch this beetle, and there's two things that I would like you to be _____ of. The first is how it deals with this ________ that we've put in its way. See, look, it does a little dance, and then it carries on in exactly the same direction that it took in the first _____. A little _____, and then heads off in a particular direction. So clearly this ______ knows where it's going and it knows where it wants to go, and that's a very, very _________ thing, because if you think about it, you're at the dung pile, you've got this great big pie that you want to get away from everybody else, and the quickest way to do it is in a straight line. So we gave them some more tasks to deal with, and what we did here is we turned the world under their feet. And watch its ________. So this animal has actually had the whole world turned under its feet. It's turned by 90 degrees. But it doesn't flinch. It knows exactly where it wants to go, and it heads off in that particular direction.

Solution


  1. obstacle
  2. place
  3. dance
  4. response
  5. animal
  6. aware
  7. experiments
  8. important
  9. walking
  10. investigate

Original Text


So what you've got to imagine here is this animal here moving across the African veld. Its head is down. It's walking backwards. It's the most bizarre way to actually transport your food in any particular direction, and at the same time it's got to deal with the heat. This is Africa. It's hot.

So what I want to share with you now are some of the experiments that myself and my colleagues have used to investigate how dung beetles deal with these problems.

So watch this beetle, and there's two things that I would like you to be aware of. The first is how it deals with this obstacle that we've put in its way. See, look, it does a little dance, and then it carries on in exactly the same direction that it took in the first place. A little dance, and then heads off in a particular direction. So clearly this animal knows where it's going and it knows where it wants to go, and that's a very, very important thing, because if you think about it, you're at the dung pile, you've got this great big pie that you want to get away from everybody else, and the quickest way to do it is in a straight line. So we gave them some more tasks to deal with, and what we did here is we turned the world under their feet. And watch its response. So this animal has actually had the whole world turned under its feet. It's turned by 90 degrees. But it doesn't flinch. It knows exactly where it wants to go, and it heads off in that particular direction.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
dung beetles 8
great big 4
path integration 4
straight line 3
polarized light 3
dung beetle 2
dung ball 2
dung pat 2
rolling balls 2
celestial cues 2
dance behavior 2
cool dung 2
degrees centigrade 2
dry dung 2
dung pellets 2
outward path 2
called path 2


Important Words


  1. africa
  2. african
  3. animal
  4. aware
  5. beetle
  6. beetles
  7. big
  8. bizarre
  9. carries
  10. colleagues
  11. dance
  12. deal
  13. deals
  14. degrees
  15. direction
  16. dung
  17. experiments
  18. feet
  19. flinch
  20. food
  21. gave
  22. great
  23. head
  24. heads
  25. heat
  26. hot
  27. imagine
  28. important
  29. investigate
  30. line
  31. moving
  32. obstacle
  33. pie
  34. pile
  35. place
  36. problems
  37. put
  38. quickest
  39. response
  40. share
  41. straight
  42. tasks
  43. time
  44. transport
  45. turned
  46. veld
  47. walking
  48. watch
  49. world