The greater honeyguide (''Indicator indicator'') is a bird in the family

Indicatoridae Honeyguides (family Indicatoridae) are near passerine birds in the order Piciformes. They are also known as indicator birds, or honey birds, although the latter term is also used more narrowly to refer to species of the genus ''Prodotiscus''. The ...

paleotropical The Paleotropical Kingdom (Paleotropis) is a floristic kingdom comprising tropical areas of Africa, Asia and Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand), as proposed by Ronald Good and Armen Takhtajan. Part of its flora, inherited from the ancien ...

near passerine birds related to the woodpeckers. Its English and scientific names refer to its habit of guiding people to bee colonies. Claims that it also guides non-human animals are disputed. The greater honeyguide is a resident breeder in sub-Saharan Africa. It is found in a variety of

habitats In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

that have trees, especially dry open woodland, but not in the West African

jungle A jungle is land covered with dense forest and tangled vegetation, usually in tropical climates. Application of the term has varied greatly during the past recent century. Etymology The word ''jungle'' originates from the Sanskrit word ''jaṅ ...

Description

The greater honeyguide is about 20 cm long and weighs about 50 g. Like all

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

n honeyguides, it has bold white patches on the sides of the tail. The male has dark grey-brown upperparts and white underparts, with a black throat. The wings are streaked whitish, and there is a yellow shoulder patch. The bill is pink. The female is duller and lacks the black throat. Her bill is blackish. Immature birds are very distinctive, having olive-brown upperparts with a white rump and yellow throat and upper breast.

Diet

Bee colonies

The greater honeyguide feeds primarily on the contents of bee colonies ("nests"):

bee Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfami ...

eggs Humans and human ancestors have scavenged and eaten animal eggs for millions of years. Humans in Southeast Asia had domesticated chickens and harvested their eggs for food by 1,500 BCE. The most widely consumed eggs are those of fowl, especial ...

, larvae and pupae;

waxworm Waxworms are the caterpillar larvae of wax moths, which belong to the family Pyralidae (snout moths). Two closely related species are commercially bred – the lesser wax moth (''Achroia grisella'') and the greater wax moth (''Galleria ...

s; and

beeswax Beeswax (''cera alba'') is a natural wax produced by honey bees of the genus ''Apis''. The wax is formed into scales by eight wax-producing glands in the abdominal segments of worker bees, which discard it in or at the hive. The hive worker ...

. (Honeyguides are among the few birds that can digest wax.) It frequently associates with other honeyguides at bees' nests; immatures dominate adults, and immatures of this species dominate all others. Like other honeyguides, the greater honeyguide enters bees' nests while the bees are torpid in the early morning, feeds at abandoned hives (African bees desert more often than those of the temperate zones), and scavenges at hives robbed by people or other large animals, notably the ratel or honey badger.

Guiding of humans

The greater honeyguide is known to guide people to the nests of wild bees.A guiding bird attracts a person's attention with wavering, chattering tya' notes compounded with peeps or pipes", sounds it also gives in aggression. The guiding bird flies toward an occupied nest (greater honeyguides know the sites of many bees' nests in their territories) and then stops nearby the nest. Honey-hunters then do a final search for the bee colony, and if deemed suitable, harvest honey from the bee colony through the use of fire and smoke to subdue the bees, and axes and machetes to expose the colony. After harvesting the honey, the honeyguide eats wax that is left. One study found that use of honeyguides by the

Boran people The Borana is one of the two major subgroups of the Oromo people. They live in the Borena Zone of the Oromia Region and Liben Zone of the Somali Region of Ethiopia, former Northern Frontier District of Northern Kenya,Tana River in the former co ...

of East Africa reduces their search time for honey by approximately two-thirds. Because of this benefit, the Boran use a specific loud whistle, known as the ''fuulido'', when a search for honey is about to begin. The ''fuulido'' doubles the encounter rate with honeyguides. In northern Tanzania, Honeyguides increased the Hadza's rate of finding bee nests by 560%, and led men to significantly higher yielding nests than those found without honeyguides. Another study of the Yao honey-hunters in northern Mozambique showed that the honeyguides responded to the traditional ''brrrr-hmm'' call of the honey-hunters. The chances of finding a bee-hive were greatly increased when the traditional call was used. That study reported anecdotes from Yao honey-hunters that adult but not juvenile honeyguides respond to the specific honey-hunting calls. In African folklore, it is frequently noted that the honeyguide should be thanked with a gift of honey; if not, it may lead its follower to a lion, bull

elephant Elephants are the largest existing land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant, the African forest elephant, and the Asian elephant. They are the only surviving members of the family Elephantidae a ...

, or venomous snake as punishment. However, “others maintain that honeycomb spoils the bird, and leave it to find its own bits of comb”. While many depictions of the human-honeyguide mutualism emphasize honey-hunters graciously repaying the birds with piles of wax left in a conspicuous location, such behavior is not universal. The Hadza people of northern Tanzania frequently burn, bury, or hide the wax that lays with the intent of keeping the bird hungry, and more likely to guide again. Some greater honeyguides have stopped this guiding behavior, or mutualism, in parts of Kenya, due to a loss of response from people in the area.

Possible guiding of non-human animals

Many sources say that this species also guides

honey badger The honey badger (''Mellivora capensis''), also known as the ratel ( or ), is a mammal widely distributed in Africa, Southwest Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Because of its wide range and occurrence in a variety of habitats, it is listed a ...

s (ratels). Friedmann (1955, quoted by Harper) notes that Sparrman said in the 18th century that indigenous Africans reported this interaction, but Friedmann adds that no biologist has seen it. According to Dean and MacDonald (1981), Friedmann does quote reports that greater honeyguides guide

baboon Baboons are primates comprising the genus ''Papio'', one of the 23 genera of Old World monkeys. There are six species of baboon: the hamadryas baboon, the Guinea baboon, the olive baboon, the yellow baboon, the Kinda baboon and the chacma b ...

s and speculates that the behavior evolved in relation to these species before the appearance of humanity. However, they state,

In addition to that listed by Friedmann (1955:41-47), the only recent record is of a greater honeyguide giving its guiding call to baboons at Wankie Game Reserve, Zimbabwe (C. J. Vernon, pers. comm.). However, Vernon did not see a positive response by the baboons to the honeyguide. No additional records of honeyguides and ratels have been reported since Friedmann (1955) and the first-hand accounts given in his review in support of this association are all of incomplete guiding sequences. No biologist has ever reported this association.

Dean and MacDonald go on to express doubt that honeyguides guide other animals and suggest that the behavior may have evolved with "early man". It has also been acknowledged that bee colonies are seasonally very common in Africa and ratels probably have no trouble finding them. Another argument against guiding of non-human animals is that near cities, where Africans increasingly buy sugar rather than hunting for wild honey, guiding behavior is disappearing. Ultimately, it may disappear everywhere.

Other food

The greater honeyguide also catches some flying insects, especially swarming

termite Termites are small insects that live in colonies and have distinct castes (eusocial) and feed on wood or other dead plant matter. Termites comprise the infraorder Isoptera, or alternatively the epifamily Termitoidae, within the order Blattode ...

s. It sometimes follows mammals or birds to catch the insects they flush, and joins mixed-species flocks in ones and twos. It has been known to eat the eggs of small birds.

Reproduction

In addition to being a predator of insects and a mutualist with its follower species, the greater honeyguide is a

brood parasite Brood parasites are animals that rely on others to raise their young. The strategy appears among birds, insects and fish. The brood parasite manipulates a host, either of the same or of another species, to raise its young as if it were its ow ...

. It lays white eggs in series of 3 to 7, for a total of 10 to 20 in a year. Each egg is laid in a different nest of a bird of another species, including some woodpeckers, barbets, kingfishers,

bee-eater The bee-eaters are a group of non-passerine birds in the family Meropidae, containing three genera and thirty species. Most species are found in Africa and Asia, with a few in southern Europe, Australia, and New Guinea. They are characterised by ...

wood hoopoe The wood hoopoes or scimitarbills are a small African family, Phoeniculidae, of near passerine birds. They live south of the Sahara Desert and are not migratory. While the family is now restricted to Sub-Saharan Africa, fossil evidence shows tha ...

starling Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae. The Sturnidae are named for the genus '' Sturnus'', which in turn comes from the Latin word for starling, ''sturnus''. Many Asian species, particularly the larger ones, ...

s, and large swallows. It is common for the female greater honeyguide to break the host's eggs when laying her own. All the species parasitized nest in holes, covered nests, or deep cup nests. The chick has a membranous hook on the bill that it uses, while still blind and featherless, to kill the host's young outright or by repeated wounds.

References

External links

* BBC Radio 4's ''Natural Histories'
Honeyguide episode
* Greater honeyguide
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds

YouTube Video: Honey Guide Bird(Amazing Partnership) Guiding humans to Beehive

YouTube Video: BBC Talking to Strangers: honey birds

{{Taxonbar, from=Q593582 greater honeyguide Brood parasites Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa greater honeyguide Indicator (genus) Taxa named by Anders Sparrman