40 Fun Facts About Honeyguides

Which literary pair did a researcher liken the greater honeyguide to, for helping people yet killing its nestmates?

Jekyll and Hyde was the comparison, because the same bird that shares the spoils of a hive with people hatches in a stolen nest and kills its foster siblings within days.

In 1588 a missionary saw a small bird, now known as a honeyguide, slip into his church to nibble what?

Candles made of beeswax drew the bird in, and the missionary went on to write the first known account of it leading men to bees' nests.

Besides honeyguides, which sea mammals are known to help people find food, by driving mullet into fishermen's nets?

Dolphins in Brazil herd fish toward waiting fishermen and catch more for themselves, the one partnership researchers call comparable to the honeyguide's.

Why do Hadza honey-hunters often burn, bury or hide the leftover wax instead of leaving it for the honeyguide?

To keep it hungry is the aim, since a bird that has not eaten is more likely to guide again, yet the partnership still supplies about a tenth of the Hadza's calories.

The honey badger, long said to follow honeyguides to hives, is also known by which other name?

Ratel is the honey badger's other name. Legends of it following the bird go back centuries, but no biologist has seen it happen, and footage of the pair has been accused of being staged.

Honeyguides never raise their own chicks, laying eggs in other birds' nests like which better-known family of birds?

Cuckoos share the trick so closely that the greater honeyguide was first classified as one of them when it was named in 1777.

What do honey-hunters use to subdue the bees before opening a nest that a honeyguide has led them to?

Smoke from a burning bundle of twigs and leaves, hoisted high into the tree, calms the colony before the hunters fell the trunk for its honey.

Some experts trace the honeyguide's partnership with people back 1.9 million years to which human ancestor?

Homo erectus is the proposed first partner, though the earliest written record of a bird leading people to honey dates only from the 1500s.

A 2025 study found that greater honeyguides sometimes lead people not to bees but to which other animals?

Snakes turn up at the end of some trips, which folklore calls revenge for an unpaid reward, but the researchers think the birds simply make mistakes.

The greater honeyguide's scientific name is which Latin word for a guide, repeated twice over?

Indicator indicator is the full name, a tautonym in which genus and species match, and the whole family of honeyguides is named after it.

Which birds are the honeyguides' closest living relatives, placed with them and the toucans in the order Piciformes?

Woodpeckers are the nearest kin, yet honeyguides are the only members of the order that feed on wax and the only ones that leave other birds to raise their young.

Which stringed instrument names the heaviest honeyguide, whose male makes a display sound with its tail in a dive?

Lyre is the instrument, after the outward-curving tail feathers that brush against the wind as the bird plunges over West and Central African rainforest.

At what time of day do honeyguides raid bees' nests on their own, because the bees are cool and sluggish?

Early morning is the safest time, because honeyguides are not immune to stings and a swarm of angry bees can kill one.

Which bodily feature gives honeyguides some protection from stings when they feed at a bees' nest?

Thick skin blunts some stings but does not make the birds immune, and much of the wax they eat comes from nests the bees have already abandoned.

What does a guiding honeyguide do on reaching the tree with the bees' nest, as a cue to start searching?

It falls silent and perches near the hive, after chattering all the way there, and that hush tells the hunters to look closely.

The Malaysian honeyguide, one of the family's few species outside Africa, has a call that begins like which animal?

A cat is what it sounds like, a harsh miaow followed by a rattle, from a bird so little studied that its breeding habits are still largely unknown.

Which mountain range is home to the yellow-rumped honeyguide, one of only two honeyguides found in Asia?

The Himalayas are its stronghold, from northern India to Myanmar, and unlike its famous African cousin it has never been seen leading people to honey.

Why is the greater honeyguide's habit of guiding people to bees' nests disappearing near African cities?

Shoppers now buy sugar, so nobody follows the bird, and in parts of Kenya honeyguides have already given up calling to people.

What weapon does a newly hatched greater honeyguide use to kill the other chicks in its foster parents' nest?

Hooks on its beak, needle-sharp and fully formed at hatching, let the chick bite and shake its nestmates until it is the only mouth left to feed.

Greater honeyguide chicks kill their nestmates in pitch-dark burrows before which of their own senses has developed?

Sight comes later: the chicks are still blind and featherless when they attack, and the foster parents go on feeding the killer afterwards.

What sound do Hadza honey-hunters make to summon a honeyguide, a sound that is unlikely to scare off their prey?

A whistle that sounds like birdsong lets the Hadza call their guide without alarming the game they are hunting at the same time.

Yao honey-hunters call honeyguides with a sound passed down the generations and written brrr-hm, made up of what?

Trill then grunt is the formula, and it more than tripled a hunter's chance of being shown a bees' nest when scientists played it back in the bush.

In Zambia, which everyday sound is said to draw greater honeyguides toward people who might open a hive?

Chopping wood draws them in, a reminder that the birds need a partner with an axe to break into a nest sealed within a tree.

From whom did the Yao honey-hunters in a 2016 study say they had learned their honeyguide call?

Their fathers taught it to them and they will teach it to their sons, because honey gathered with the birds still matters in daily life.

Young greater honeyguides look so unlike the adults that Yao locals take them for what?

A separate species is the local verdict, because the reclusive juveniles wear a yellow breast that no adult has.

A 2023 playback study found that honeyguides respond far more readily to honey-hunters' calls of which kind?

Those used locally win: birds near the Hadza ignored most Yao calls and birds in Yao country ignored most Hadza ones, so the birds must learn the signals.

Niassa reserve, where Yao honey-hunters call honeyguides, lies in which country on Africa's Indian Ocean coast?

Mozambique holds the reserve, a wilderness about the size of Denmark where the Yao gather wild honey with the birds' help.

The Hadza, hunter-gatherers who follow honeyguides to honey, live around Lake Eyasi in which East African country?

Tanzania is home to the Hadza, whose rate of finding bees' nests rises by 560 per cent when a honeyguide leads the way.

Where does a honeyguide's egg spend an extra day of incubation, giving its chick a head start over the host's young?

Inside the mother is where it starts developing, so the honeyguide chick hatches days ahead and is waiting when the first host chick emerges.

In Zambia, the greater honeyguide's commonest hosts dig nest burrows into the roofs of holes made by which mammal?

Aardvark holes give the host birds a ready-made earth ceiling to tunnel into, about half a metre long, and the honeyguide slips its egg in.

Which colourful birds, named for the insects they catch, are the greater honeyguide's commonest hosts in Zambia?

Bee-eaters lose most: in one study two-thirds of little bee-eater nests were visited by a honeyguide, which punctures the hosts' eggs as she lays her own.

The lesser honeyguide most often lays its eggs in the nests of which fruit-eating African birds?

Barbets are the usual victims, tree-hole nesters from the honeyguide's own order, though it will also slip an egg into a starling's nest.

Which members of the honeyguide family, among its smallest, are unlike their relatives in not eating beeswax?

Honeybirds are thought to eat the waxy coating of scale insects instead, and they lay their eggs in the nests of small songbirds such as warblers.

Like most of their order, honeyguides have zygodactyl feet, a grip for tree trunks with the toes arranged how?

Two forward, two back is the layout, the same X-shaped foot that parrots use, and it lets a honeyguide cling beside a comb while it bites off wax.

Besides the greater honeyguide, which other family member do some authorities say has guided people to hives?

Scaly-throated honeyguide reports go back to a 1955 monograph, but other experts doubt them, and the bird usually just trails its famous cousin to opened hives.

Which East African people sound a loud signal called the fuulido before setting out to find honey with a honeyguide?

Boran honey-hunters double their chance of meeting a honeyguide with the fuulido, and following the bird cuts their search time by about two-thirds.

Which South African biologist showed in 2016 that wild honeyguides respond to a special call from honey-hunters?

Claire Spottiswoode ran the playback tests with Yao honey-hunters, years after a talk on honeyguides thrilled her as an 11-year-old in Cape Town.

Yellow-rumped honeyguides have been seen taking advantage when which predatory insects attack a wild bee colony?

Giant hornets of the species Vespa mandarinia, the world's largest, raid the combs of giant honey bees, and the honeyguide makes use of the attack to feed.

The loud, human-sounding Yao call to honeyguides may also help by scaring away which dangerous animals?

Elephants and buffalo can trample a honey-hunter, so a call that could only come from a person is a useful warning to them in dense bush.

Which colour are the outer tail feathers of every African honeyguide, among the family's most visible features?

White marks every African member, while the two honeyguides found in Asia show pale grey there instead.