28 BULLETIN 208, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



some of the facts and ideas they contain. The basis for most of them 

 is the assumption that the bird derives a benefit from the habit in the 

 form of otherwise inaccessible food thereby made available to it. 



Seitz (1923, pp. 22-23) considers the relationship between the honey- 

 guide and the ratel as something akin to the beginnings of domestica- 

 tion of animals, but does not attempt to theorize about the origin of 

 the relationship. 



Chapin (1924) suggests that the honey-guides would seem incapable 

 of breaking open many bees' nests as their beaks are not well suited 

 for such a purpose, and that their present feeding habits probably 

 could not have developed without the aid of a collaborator, such as 

 the ratel. The fact that many species of honey-guides feed on wax 

 but do not guide certainly suggests that cerophagy developed before 

 guiding, as the former is independent of and more widespread than 

 the latter. Chapin suggests that the habit may have started by the 

 birds finding ratels at newly demolished bees' nests and then, by a sort 

 of mutual association, the two creatures becoming auxiliaries in 

 their search for beehives. In the absence of further data it is not 

 stated how the bird became the leader, and conversely, why and how 

 the ratel, which apparently had been able to find and open bees' 

 nests by itself previously, became a follower of the honey-guide. 

 This gap in oiu- understanding is not a weakness of Chapin's theory, 

 which is fairly similar to that which I shall propose here, but is due to 

 a lack of factual knowledge. The greater mobility of the bird may 

 have caused it to go on ahead of its slower moving companion, and 

 to wait for it to "catch up" at intervals. We have no data on the 

 relative frequency with which ratels rob hives with and without the 

 aid of the honey-guides. 



Quite different is the suggestion put forth by Hoesch (1937), who 

 feels that the guiding habit may have started between the honey-guide 

 and the primitive African human, and that the fact that even the 

 natives repeat the story of the ratel is due to a form of anthropomor- 

 phism of the savages themselves, although he admits that it is entirely 

 conceivable that the sight of a ratel may also be as efifective a re- 

 leaser of guiding behavior by the Indicator as is the sight of a human. 

 It should be kept in mind that Hoesch was overly impressed with 

 the printed statements to the effect that the ratel was a wholly 

 nocturnal and purely terrestrial creature, incapable of climbing. 

 This would have made it improbable that it would get in touch with 

 a diurnal creature like a honey-guide, and would have limited its 

 activities to bees' nests in or on the ground, those in trees being 

 thought out of its reach. Hoesch remarks that many creatures indi- 

 cate, by their excited movements and calls, the presence of a snake 

 or beast of prey, supposedly recognized by the bird as a dangerous 



