The Bird That Takes You to the Bees

In parts of Africa there is a small brown bird called a honeyguide. It eats beeswax, which almost nothing else does. The trouble is that the wax is inside a bees' nest, and a bird that size cannot break one open.

So it fetches a person. The honeyguide flies to somebody, chatters at them until they look up, and then flies a little way and waits. If the person follows, it goes further and waits again. In this way it can lead somebody a long distance to a nest high in a tree.

The person makes smoke to quiet the bees, opens the nest and takes the honey. What is left is the wax — and that is the bird's share. Neither of them could have had anything without the other.

The strangest part is that it works both ways. In some places people have a special call they use when they want a honeyguide, and the birds have learned what it means. Nobody taught them. It is not a trick anyone trained: it is two wild animals, one of them us, who have worked out how to ask each other for help.