this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2023
35 points (97.3% liked)

Interesting Shares

1058 readers
24 users here now

Share interesting articles, projects, research, pictures, or videos.


Please include a prefix in your title!


Prefixes for posts

Certain clients offer filters to make prefixes searchable. Photon (m.lemmy.zip) used for hyperlinks below:


Icon attribution

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A wild African bird that will famously lead people to trees filled with honeycomb seems to somehow learn the distinct whistles and calls of the human foragers who live near them.

Scientists have long puzzled over this unusual cooperative relationship between humans and a wild animal. This bird species, the Greater Honeyguide, is not domesticated at all, and no one trains them.

Yet in Tanzania, Hadza foragers can use a special whistle to attract this bird, which will then flutter down and start chattering away to lead them to honey.

In Mozambique, meanwhile, honey hunters with the Yao community will attract these birds with a trilling sound followed by a low grunt, which sounds like brrr-humph.

read moer: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2023/12/07/1217800692/african-honeyguide-bird-calls-honey-human-cultural-evolution

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Exactly; biomimicry is massive in engineering disciplines. Bullet trains are modelled after kingfishers, as one neat example.