46 BULLETIN 208, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



reached in with its hind foot, grabbed a piece of comb, and dashed off 

 about 30 yards where it dropped it. Then, when the bees had calmed 

 down, it came back to the piece of comb and cleaned it of bees by 

 wiping it in the sandy ground, and frequently wiped its hands in the 

 sand to get rid of the bees. It took Crooks about 15-20 minutes to 

 get down from the la-antz from which he watched this performance, 

 and then the baboons (including the one that went to the hive) fled. 

 The honey-guide stayed near the hive at his approach, and chattered 

 to him. As far as Crooks could recall (the incident took place some 

 years before he told it to me), the honey-guide was present before 

 the baboon actually opened the hive; it did not come there attracted 

 by the rending noises of the actual breaking open of the bees' nest. 



Major Haydock has generously given me still another observation 

 of interest in this connection. Once, in Northern Rhodesia, he and 

 his native assistants saw a greater honey-guide attempting to lead a 

 small mongoose, Myonax cauui lancasteri Roberts. He first noticed 

 the bird calling in the usual manner from a very small bush, about 4 

 feet high. At first he could not see what it was calling, but soon it 

 flew to another equally small bush when Haydock was able to see the 

 mongoose. The bird followed the mongoose, calling all the time. 

 The latter stopped once and looked up, whereupon the calling was 

 intensified, but the mongoose moved off without following. The bird 

 then saw Haydock and began to focus its attentions on him and his 

 natives, leading them to a bees' nest about 300 yards from that spot. 

 The fact that a honey-guide would attempt to "guide" a nonfollower, 

 such as a mongoose, suggests that the recognition by the bird of a 

 potential foraging symbiont may partake of the nature of trial-and- 

 error learning, although if this were basically the case one would 

 expect more frequent errors of this sort. Indeed, from his experience 

 in the Belgian Congo, Verheyen (1951, pp. 49, 91-93) suggests that 

 the greater honey-guide "calls" to all the larger mammals, but his 

 evidence is not conclusive and is contrary to the total experience of a 

 great many observers in southern and eastern Africa. His assump- 

 tion that the greater honey-guide does not distinguish between the 

 various mammals is very doubtful. 



No other creatures are known to be associated with the guiding 

 behavior of the honey-guide, but it is not impossible that some others 

 may be. Thus, Chapin (1939, p. 551) states that he finds it difficult 

 "to abandon the idea that many species of Indicatoridae get help in 

 attacking hives from squirrels, monkeys, or other mammals" since 

 these birds are so poorly adapted, themselves, for securing what is 

 known to be their usual food. There are no observations one way or 

 the other, but it would seem plausible that the honey-guides might well 

 find bees' nests that had been opened and robbed by squirrels, mon- 



