Why do honeybees and hermit crabs follow a zigzag path during telotaxis?

In the study of stereotyped responses, honeybees and hermit crabs exhibit a behavior known as telotaxis, which is a direct orientation toward a light source.1

The zigzag path observed in these animals occurs because they treat the light source as a specific goal. When an animal is exposed to two light sources simultaneously, it does not orient toward an intermediate point between them. Instead, it orients to one light source at a time. Because the animal switches its orientation from one source to the other at unpredictable intervals, its resulting path of travel appears as a zigzag. This behavior is distinct from tropotaxis, where an animal would instead move toward an intermediate point based on simultaneous intensity comparisons between two receptors.1