Mutualism And Manipulation In Hadza-Honeyguide Interactions
This study observed Hadza foragers in northern Tanzania as they interacted with Greater Honeyguide birds. The birds call to attract foraging humans, and lead them to bee nests. Honeyguide-assisted harvests are far more productive than unassisted harvest, and provide a significant proportion of the Hadza’s total diet. The humans hide nest remnants to keep birds hungry and guiding. The authors believe they are still able to scavenge food which would have been inaccessible without human intervention, and speculate on how this relationship evolved.
[Abstract excerpted from original source.]
“We investigated the ecology and evolution of interspecific cooperation between the Greater Honeyguide bird, Indicator indicator, and human hunter-gatherers, the Hadza of northern Tanzania. We found that honeyguides increased the Hadza’s rate of finding bee nests by 560%, and that the birds led men to significantly higher yielding nests than those found without honeyguides. We estimate that 8–10% of the Hadza’s total diet was acquired with the help of honeyguides. Contrary to most depictions of the human-honeyguide relationship, the Hadza did not actively repay honeyguides, but instead, hid, buried, and burned honeycomb, with the intent of keeping the bird hungry and thus more likely to guide again. Such manipulative behavior attests to the importance of social intelligence in hunter-gatherer foraging strategies. We present an evolutionary model for human-honeyguide interactions guided by the behavioral ecology of bees, non-human primates, and hunter-gatherers.”