HONEY-GUIDES — FRIEDMANN 317 



this statement is as close to the actual picture as present understanding 

 permits, it has seemed to me possibly a little forced in its reasoning. 

 It was, therefore, with considerable interest that I recently came across, 

 in Russell's (1953) description of the drive character of instinctive 

 behavior, some ideas that give further support to the applicability of 

 the "kumpan" concept to guiding activities. 



In the current general theory of instinct, we find that usually a 

 chain of actions grouped under one heading as instinctive behavior 

 tends to be divided into two phases, an introductory one of openly 

 seeking, striving, appetitive behavior, and a directly subsequent one 

 of essentially consummatory action, generally of a quasi-mechanical 

 or quite stereotyped nature. The emphasis on the innate drive char- 

 acter of instinctive behavior, developed largely by Lorenz and his 

 colleagues, seems warranted. 



These investigators account for the specificity of the drives by hy- 

 pothesizing what they term "action specific energy," which is said to 

 accumulate and to be discharged with and into highly specific appeti- 

 tive behavior patterns. Lorenz (1950) further assumes "that some 

 sort of energy, specific to one definite activity, is stored up while this 

 activity remains quiescent and is consumed in its discharge." Russell 

 sees no real need to hypothesize energy when all that seems to be 

 "accumulated" may be described just as readily as "specific tension or 

 unreleased tendency to carry out a certain course of action." Regard- 

 less of whether it is a specific energy or a specific tension, the fact 

 remains that we have, in either case, a support for what I implied when 

 I wrote that the guiding behavior was "satisfied" and brought to a 

 halt when both the bees and the bee "kumpan" simultaneously came 

 to be within the sensory range of the bird. The specific energy is 

 discharged, or the specific tension is dispelled, when the guiding bird 

 achieves the unison of the releasing agent, the foraging symbiont, and 

 the thing with which the releaser is associated in the experience of the 

 activated bird, the bees. The mode of termination of guiding is one 

 more example of the increasingly obvious fact that it is the discharge 

 of consummatory action and not the biological or sm"vival value in- 

 volved that is the goal of innate appetitive behavior as far as the indi- 

 vidual bird is concerned. 



The Rustling Flight 



The rustling flight, recorded for both the greater and the lesser 

 honey-guides (Friedmann, 1955, pp. 130-133, 184), is of interest not 

 only for itself but as the possible root from which evolved the highly 

 specialized performance of the lyre-tailed honey-guide, Melichneutes 

 robustus. The evidence is somewhat divided as to whether the rustling 



