THE HOXEY-GUIDES 63 



over the edge, sure enough there were the bees going in and out of a 

 small crack. . . . On a previous occasion . . . we first heard and then 

 saw a Honey-Guide, and the Anderobo at once went off in pursuit. 

 . . . After a break-back struggle through, under and over the dense 

 tangled undergrowth, we came up with the bird in great exitement, 

 sitting on the dead branch of a Podocarpus tree, and there was the 

 bees' nest in a small hole about thirty feet from the ground." 



It appears that while these cases do not seem to fit in too readily 

 with the thought suggested above, the discrepancies are not insur- 

 mountable. We do not have sufficient data on any one of these cases 

 to attempt to "explain away" the variation in pattern it presents, 

 but it does not seem unreasonable to suggest that any activity of so 

 complex a nature as guiding is open to the influence of many factors 

 and that therefore a lack of rigid uniformity in its expression is not 

 necessarily a negation of its underlying pattern. 



Inasmuch as the honey-guides catch and consume quantities of 

 insects, the question arises as to why they should be especially inter- 

 ested in bees' nests. It is now possible to state that the thing of 

 primary concern to them there is not bee larvae or honey but beeswax, 

 and this item is, of course, the one thing they cannot get elsewhere. 

 We still do not know just how essential beeswax is to the birds, but 

 it is evident that they not only eat it regularly and avidly and extract 

 nourishment from it but when given the choice between plain, dry 

 wax and comb fuU of honey and larvae they prefer the dry wax. In 

 this they are unique among birds, and it is this wax-eating habit that 

 must have preceded and framed the development of the so-called 

 guiding behavior. However, inasmuch as the birds can get wax 

 without guiding, as do the nonguiding species, it follows that the 

 origin of the guiding habit was not necessitated, but merely expedited, 

 by the antecedent cerophagous tendencies of the birds. It should be 

 recalled that the birds seek out the creatm-es which, by releasing the 

 "guiding" behavior, become the followers, and that, as Lorenz pointed 

 out, instinctive actions differ from mere reflex actions in that the 

 former are "desired reflex actions." Being sought or desired is the 

 one point in which instinctive actions differ from all other reflex 

 actions. Since guiding is not essential for food-getting, and since 

 honey-guides show very little tendency to indulge in courtship display, 

 the possibility that the basis of guiding behavior may be a displaced 

 display activity cannot be ruled out without due consideration. 

 Cases of displacement of behavior patterns from their apparently 

 original loci to quite other areas are not unknown; in the present 

 instance this displacement, if such it be, is remarkably wide and 

 permits individuals of both sexes, immature as well as adult, to take 

 part. Whether we look upon guiding as a form of displaced courtship 



