How honeyguide birds talk to people | The secrets of #HoneyHarvesting in #Africa

Researchers have long known that people in Africa cooperate with a wild bird called the greater honeyguide. The bird shows people where to find bees’ nests, which they harvest for their honey. The birds then feed on the wax combs left behind. New research, published in the journal Science, shows that this remarkable cooperative relationship involves two-way communication between humans and a free-living wild animal, which is astonishingly rare in the natural world. Honeyguides solicit people wit

h a distinctive chattering call and fly from tree to tree in the direction of a bees’ nest, showing their human follower where to go. In turn, listen here as these men from the Yao people of northern Mozambique make a special honey-hunting call – a loud trill followed by a short grunt: ‘brrr-hm’. It’s passed down from generation to generation in this honey-hunting culture, and works as a signal to the honeyguide that a person is looking for bees’ nests and willing to follow. So how did researche

rs come to these remarkable conclusions? With the help of a community living in Mozambique’s Niassa National Reserve, Dr Claire Spottiswoode from the University of Cambridge and the University of Cape Town carried out controlled experiments to test whether the birds recognised and responded correctly to the specific meaning of the ‘brrr-hmm’ sound. Spottiswoode and co-authors Keith Begg and Dr Colleen Begg made recordings of this ‘brrr-hm’ call as well as of ‘control’ sounds, which were arbitrar

y words called out by the honey-hunters, and the sounds of another bird, a local dove species: ‘barr-bar’. Claire and the honey-hunters then played back one of these three types of sound on experimental honey-hunting trips. That’s Claire in the hat, together with honey-hunters Orlando Yassene and Musaji Muamedi. Together, they walked over several hundred kilometres to carry out the experiment. They found that honeyguides were much more likely to respond to the special call made to attract them.

The traditional ‘brrr-hm’ sound doubled the probability of being guided by a honeyguide from about 33% to 66%, compared with other animal or human sounds. This increased the overall probability of finding a bees’ nest three-fold – from 16% to 54%. This can make all the difference for communities who get a significant proportion of their total calories from wild honey, and sometimes follow any one bird for nearly a kilometre. Humans cooperate with other species such as dogs, falcons and cormorant

s to help them forage. But honeyguides are remarkable because they aren’t domesticated, trained or coerced. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship that could go back to the earliest days of our own species.