A bird species responds to the specialized calls of human honey hunters, then leads them to bees' nests.

Credit: Claire N. Spottiswoode

The greater honeyguide (Indicator indicator, pictured with honey hunter) benefits by eating the beeswax left behind by hunters after they break open bees' nests to get the honey. Claire Spottiswoode at the University of Cambridge, UK, and her colleagues found that 75% of nests located by honey hunters in Niassa National Reserve, Mozambique, were found with the help of the bird. Playing recordings of a traditional trill-grunt call made by the local Yao people while hunting doubled the chances of attracting a honeyguide to 66%, compared with recordings of other human or animal sounds. Overall, the call tripled the chances of finding a bees' nest to 54%.

The ability to understand and respond to human calls is not restricted to domesticated animals, the authors say.

Science 353, 387–389 (2016)