Greater honeyguides (Indicator indicator), a species of African bird, are well known to guide other species to beehives. They have even been known to work with honey badgers, but their closest and most successful collaborators are humans. Several indigenous African groups work with these birds across their range. Looking at these interactions in Tanzania and Mozambique, a due of scientists has shown that honeyguides respond more readily to the specific calls of their local honey-hunting partners than they do to the calls of honey hunters from other regions. Thus, honeyguides appear to learn the calls of their local partners, and honey hunters maintain these successful calls over generations.
Although the animal kingdom is full of interspecific mutualism, systems in which humans successfully cooperate with wild animals are rare.
One such relationship involves the greater honeyguide, a small African bird known to lead humans to wild bees’ nests.
Humans open the nests to collect honey, and the honeyguides eat the exposed beeswax.
Human honey hunters in different parts of Africa often use specialized and culturally distinct calls to signal they are looking for a honeyguide partner and to maintain cooperation while following a guiding bird.
For example, honey hunters from the Yao cultural group in northern Mozambique use a loud trill followed by a grunt (‘brrr-hm’).
In contrast, honey hunters from the Hadza cultural group of northern Tanzania use a melodic whistle.
These successful calls have been maintained in these groups for generations.
In a series of field experiments across these areas, Dr. Claire Spottiswoode from the University of Cambridge and the University of Cape Town and Dr. Brian Wood from the University of California Los Angeles and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology investigated whether honeyguides are more likely to respond to signals of their local human culture than to those of another culture or to arbitrary human…
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