Honey badgers cooperate with sparrows to steal honey

Tanzania Honey Badgers may have combined with honeyguide finches to harvest wild honey and beeswax before humans.

Honey badgers cooperate with sparrows to steal honey

Honey badger eats honey on a tree. Video : IFL Science

Honey finches and honey badgers may cooperate to steal honey, according to a study published June 29 in the journal Zoology . The study found that 61% of Hadzabe honey hunters in Tanzania had seen honey guide finches and honey badgers interacting in this way.

Honeyguides love beeswax, but they’re not strong enough to crack open a honeycomb to get to it. For a long time, these finches guided honey hunters to wild beehives. They waited until humans had collected the honey, then feasted on the remaining wax. Then the honeyguides figured out that the same trick could be used on another species, the honey badger.

A new study by scientists from the University of California, Los Angeles, is the first to find large-scale evidence of honeyguide finches ( Indicator ) and honey badgers ( Mellivora capensis ) working together to capture honeycombs. The team conducted more than 400 interviews with honey hunters across Africa, some of whom had worked with honeyguide finches to source honey.

While 80% of the group surveyed had never seen the two species interact and were skeptical of the story’s veracity, the researchers found a few exceptions. In Tanzania, people from three separate communities reported seeing honeyguides and honey badgers teaming up to raid nests to steal honey and wax. Hadzabe honey hunters operate there, and 61% of them reported witnessing the behavior. The Hadzabe move silently through the landscape while hunting animals with bows and arrows, so it’s easy to see honeyguides and honey badgers interacting, according to Dr. Brian Wood of the University of California, Los Angeles.

Honey badgers are unexpected partners with sparrows due to their poor hearing and eyesight. This may explain why honeyguides are willing to switch to cooperating with humans if given the opportunity.

"Some have speculated that the honeyguide finches' homing behaviour may have evolved through interactions with honey badgers, but the finches switched to humans when we arrived because humans were more skilled at handling bees and accessing hives," said Dr Claire Spottiswoode from the University of Cambridge's Department of Zoology.

An Khang (According to IFL Science )

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