56 BULLETIN 208, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



little under 8 minutes and the distance was about 250 yards. I may- 

 say that all my guiding tours were timed by watch and measured by 

 actually counting the paces between the trees on which the guide 

 rested between flights and by assuming an average of about 2 feet 

 per pace through the bush. Even if there may have been an error in 

 the absolute measurements, the relative distances of the guiding course 

 and the direct return are fairly accurate as both were measured in the 

 same way. 



A lesser point is the fact that the guide is actually out of sight of 

 the follower most of the time, the guiding depending largely on the 

 bird's chatter, and, of com-se, also on its conspicuous dipping flight as 

 it goes from one tree to another with its white outer tail feathers 

 widely spread. To a ratel or a baboon this matter of following a 

 sound rather than a sight may make little or no difference, but the 

 way in which the bird acts while guiding is quite similar to that of a 

 bird that is trying to get away from one, even though it does wait at 

 its next resting spot until the follower comes near. All naturahsts 

 who have tried to follow birds to see them better have had the experi- 

 ence of getting fairly close only to have the bird fly off to another tree 

 20-50 yards away, and then have to start following it over again. 

 This is essentially what happens during a guiding tour. 



While the actual behavior involved in guiding is not too dissimilar 

 to diversionary display, it is accompanied by the all-important factor 

 of the bird seeking out, of its own volition, the object of its display. 

 Armstrong's terms "delotropy" and "delophony" could readily be 

 applied to guiding. The delophonic aspect of this behavior, coupled 

 with the fact that the guide is actually out of sight of the follower so 

 much of the time, raises a point of possible phylogenetic significance. 

 The species of Indicator nearest to the original stock, /. maculatus of 

 West Africa, is not known to guide, but the natives in the Cameroons 

 claim that its call woe woe means "honey-honey," and that they some- 

 times go to such a calling bird and find a bees' nest nearby (Bates, 

 1909a, pp. 15-16). As Bates puts it, the natives know nothing about 

 following this bird, and that would be an extremely diflicult thing even 

 for a native to do in the forest. This makes one wonder if guiding in 

 its incipient stages, especially in a bird of the dense forest, might not 

 have been more a matter of sound than of sight. This further sug- 

 gests that the preponderantly delophonic nature of the guiding 

 behavior in I. indicator may be, to some extent, a survival from, and 

 a reflection of, some such ancestral pattern. 



Still another bit of evidence as to the nature of the performance is 

 the fact that on occasions the bird will lead not to a bees' nest but to 

 a dead animal or to a live snake, leopard, rhinoceros, etc. I doubt that 

 these are in any sense the "purposive" goals behind the species' habit 



