The waggle dance performed by honey bees is a complex behavior that communicates directional information. In a recent paper, researchers demonstrated that younger bees learn critical parts of this dance from older, more experienced bees. Bees that learn without the benefit of teachers have errors in their dance, and while some of which can improve with practice, errors relating to distance encoding remain for their entire lives. Bees, like many other social animals, appear to benefit from social learning.
