[3][4] A guiding bird attracts a person's attention with wavering, chattering "'tya' notes compounded with peeps or pipes",[5] sounds it also gives in aggression.

[7] In African folklore, it is frequently noted that the honeyguide should be thanked with a gift of honey; if not, it may lead its follower to a lion, bull elephant, or venomous snake as punishment.

[6] While many depictions of the human-honeyguide mutualism emphasize honey-hunters graciously repaying the birds with piles of wax left in a conspicuous location, such behavior is not universal.

The Hadza people of northern Tanzania frequently burn, bury, or hide the wax that lays with the intent of keeping the bird hungry, and more likely to guide again.

[4] Some greater honeyguides have stopped this guiding behavior, or mutualism, in parts of Kenya, due to a loss of response from people in the area.

Friedmann quotes reports that greater honeyguides guide baboons and speculates that the behavior evolved in relation to these species before the appearance of humanity.

[13] However, they state, In addition to that listed by Friedmann (1955:41-47), the only recent record is of a greater honeyguide giving its guiding call to baboons at Wankie Game Reserve, Zimbabwe (C. J. Vernon, pers.

No additional records of honeyguides and ratels have been reported since Friedmann (1955) and the first-hand accounts given in his review in support of this association are all of incomplete guiding sequences.

Each egg is laid in a different nest of a bird of another species, including some woodpeckers, barbets, kingfishers, bee-eaters, wood hoopoes, starlings, and large swallows.