THE HONEY-GUIDES 45 



search of the honey themselves. They then saw that the bird was 

 leading and calling to a ratel, and they followed at a short distance for 

 some 200 to 300 yards until they came to the bees' nests. On two of 

 these occasions the hives were in the ground, and on the other two in 

 hollow trees. Once there was a pair (at least there were two individ- 

 uals) of ratels, but in the other three occasions only a single ratel. 

 The scouts never saw more than one honey-guide leading a ratel. 



J. A. Hunter, game ranger at Makindu, writes me that his oldest 

 scout, Malumbe, whom he considers a truthful and reliable reporter, 

 once was led to a bees' nest by a honey-guide, and that a ratel, guided 

 by another bhd, arrived there at the same time from the opposite 

 direction. 



Recently I have been told by Dr. J. P. Chapin of two more Euro- 

 peans who have reported to him that they witnessed ratels being led 

 by honey-guides, one in the Ubangi-Shari district of French Equatorial 

 Africa ^ and one in the region about 70 miles west of Namwala, 

 Northern Rhodesia. It may now be considered as established that 

 the tale first published by Sparrman, and since repeated over and 

 over by others, is true. It may even be that some of the latter 

 accounts were based on personal experience, although it was not 

 possible to assume this before the validity of the story was proved by 

 known eye-witness accounts. In addition to these it may be men- 

 tioned that several European naturalists resident in Africa have 

 written me of their native assistants reporting seeing ratels following 

 honey-guides. These cases were all voluntary, special reports by the 

 natives of individual incidents and were not general statements of 

 "nature lore" given in response to any questions put to them in my 

 behalf. 



The ratel is not the only mammal known to be associated with the 

 greater honey-guide in the robbing of bees' nests. In Northern 

 Rhodesia, Maj. E. L. Haydock was told by his native collectors that 

 the bird also calls to baboons and monkeys, and that occasionally the 

 baboons do follow it, but the monkeys never do. A corroborating 

 and wholly independent bit of evidence came to me from the Cape 

 Province, where Mr. Trevor McKenzie Crooks told me that one 

 morning around Christmas time near Uitenhage he saw a baboon 

 (one of a troop) opening a wild bees' nest with a greater honey-guide 

 in attendance, chattering from a perch a little way up in a tree close 

 to the hive. Crooks watched the procedure from a distance. The 

 baboon first made a clearing by repeated short dashes towards the 

 hive, which was low down in a soft-barked tree, until it had made 

 more or less of a path. Then the baboon backed up to the tree and 



» This is apparently the case reported by Gromier (1938, pp. 135-139). 



