Mondo Knows Facts
A small bird guides people to honey
The greater honeyguide calls and flits ahead, leading hunters to a bee colony People in parts of Africa answer a specific chatter call and follow the bird, then break open the nest and leave the wax behind. The relationship is one of the few known cases of a wild animal cooperating with humans. Chicks are raised by other species, so the habit is learned rather than inherited. It sits in Mondo's animals collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
Go further
More facts like this
The kori bustard is the heaviest flying birdLarge males reach about 19 kilograms on the dry African savannaA godwit flew 11,000 kilometres without landingThe bar-tailed bird crossed the Pacific in about nine daysA peregrine falcon stoops faster than 300 kilometres an hourMeasured dives exceed 380 kilometres an hour in level flight trialsNew Caledonian crows bend twigs into hooksThey carve tools from shrubs and keep good ones for later useBirds sense Earth's magnetic field to find their wayA light sensitive protein in the eye may let them see the fieldSome birds raise another species' chickCuckoo chicks hatch first and push the host's eggs or young out of the nest
๐พ Animalsfact 107 of 200
โ โ to keep reading, or swipe
Tags: birds, cooperation, africa
A small bird guides people to honey: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- The greater honeyguide calls and flits ahead, leading hunters to a bee colony. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a animals fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Animals shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.