54 BULLETIN 208, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



of conspicuous but relatively simple releasers, and that while the 

 tendency of the acting animal to give these signals is innate, as are 

 also the responses of the reactor individual, the picture becomes 

 complicated at times. This is due to the fact that "many social 

 animals respond to the species' social releasers only when provided 

 by certain individuals, which they know personally. In such cases 

 personal connexions, established through learning processes, confine 

 the reactor's responses to signals from one or a few individuals only." 

 If this may happen with such deeply innate behavior releasers as 

 intraspecific ones, it is not surprising to find it happening more 

 readily with relatively more recent and more superficial interspecific 

 ones of the sort we have been discussing between the honey-guide 

 and the human, 



Behavioristic level of the habit 



Use of the term "guiding," with respect to the behavior pattern 

 that usually results in the follower arriving at a bees' nest, is unfor- 

 tunate in that it implies a preexisting purpose or plan on the part of 

 the bird, an intelligent activity far beyond the psychological capacity 

 of any bird. We must distinguish at the outset the difference be- 

 tween the purely instinctive behavior of the individual "guiding" 

 bird and the biological end or survival value of this activity. While 

 we have no reason for assuming that the individual bird has any 

 "purpose" or "plan" when it "guides," which is an unthinking act on 

 its part, it still is true, in an evolutionary sense, that the species to 

 which it belongs has developed a guiding habit. It is only of the 

 species as a whole, viewed over the ages of its existence and develop- 

 ment, that we may speak of a purpose or goal behind its behavior, and 

 to impute this to the individual members going through a purely in- 

 stinctive behavior pattern is not only unwarranted but misleading and 

 philosophically dangerous. The word "guiding" has a purposive 

 connotation which is applicable to the species but not to any of its 

 members. 



Aside from the fact that we cannot assume any intelligent plan on 

 the part of the bird, there are several features of "guiding" which 

 further indicate its stereotyped nature. One is the fact that guiding 

 ordinarily is not direct. The bird frequently leads in a most erratic 

 course, often actually going a considerable distance beyond a bees' 

 nest and then coming back to it. I have estimated on four different 

 guiding experiences that the time and distance involved varied from 

 50 to 130 percent greater than if the bird had led in a direct path to the 

 bees' nest. The diagrams of guiding routes (fig. 5) are all from places 

 where there were no barriers to be gone around, and where trees were 



