#honeyguide — Public Fediverse posts

This bird is like a GPS for honey - Enlarge / A greater honeyguide (credit: Keabetswe Maposa)

Wit... - https://arstechnica.com/?p=1993014 #behavioralscience #honeyguide #language #science #biology #culture #birds

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/wild-birds-lead-people-to-honey-learn-from-them

This is the coolest and most interesting thing i've learned, possibly, this year! Regret missing Dr. Spottiswoode's original study from 2016/14.
#honeyguide #birds #Hadza #Tanzania #ucla #ornithology #anthropology #Yao #mozambique

7-Dec-2023
Wild birds lead people to honey — and learn from them

The greater #honeyguide can recognize distinct vocal signals to help people in Africa locate bee colonies

https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1010414 #science #ecology #cooperation #birds

#Birds and honey badgers could be cooperating to steal from #bees in parts of Africa
https://phys.org/news/2023-06-birds-honey-badgers-cooperating-bees.html

"The interaction is difficult to observe because of the confounding effect of human presence: observers can't know for sure who the #honeyguide #bird is talking to—them or the #badger... But we have to take these interviews at face value. Three communities report to have seen #HoneyguideBirds and #HoneyBadgers interacting, and it's probably no coincidence that they're all in #Tanzania."

Ever heard of #honeyguide birds? They are wild birds but work together with #honey hunters.
How?
Well, depends on where you are. Jessica van der Wal and a pan-African collaborative of early career researchers are mapping this cooperation between humans and wild birds across Africa.

Honeyguides eat wax, and humans eat honey. So they collaborate: the bird guides the honey-hunter to a bees' nest, the honey-hunter harvests it and the bird gets the wax left behind: a #mutualism.