African Honeyguides

Research on a remarkable
human-animal relationship

Amana Kilawi Othman

Amana Kilawi Othman

Biography

I grew up in Songea, a region in the south of Tanzania, adjacent to Selous Game Reserve. The biodiversity-rich ecosystem surrounding the area drives my passion for wildlife and biodiversity conservation. I hold an undergraduate degree from the College of African Wildlife Management (Mweka) in Tanzania, during which I researched the influence of water sources’ entry points on birds’ species diversity at Lake Manyara National Park. I have also worked as a project coordinator for the Ngorongoro Biodiversity Conservation Project. Following my involvement in Eliupendo Laltaika’s fieldwork on honey-hunting cultures in northern Tanzania in 2020 as a field assistant, I am dedicated to research human-honeyguide mutualism further, this time in southern Tanzania. In 2022, I joined the FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology, University of Cape Town as an MSc student in Conservation Biology.

 

Research focus

My research focus is on understanding the ‘cold spots’ in the mosaic of human-honeyguide mutualism in Tanzania. Specifically, I want to better understand honeyguide behaviour in places where there are honeyguides but no people (such as Ruaha National Park and Rungwa Game Reserve), and where there are both honeyguides and people, but people are not cooperating with the birds. I plan to conduct interviews in several communities in southern Tanzania that honey-hunt without the help of honeyguides, to understand why they don’t cooperate with honeyguides. Moreover, I will be investigating honey production in these communities, both from wild honey-hunting and beekeeping activities.

 

Peer-reviewed publications

 

News

Tragic attacks in the Niassa Special Reserve, Mozambique

On 29 April 2025, armed insurgents attacked the Mariri Environmental Centre in Mozambique’s Niassa Special Reserve, resulting in the tragic loss of two anti-poaching scouts, Domingos Daude and Fernando Paolo Wirsone (please see statement from the Niassa Carnivore Project). This followed a prior tragic attack at Kambako Safari camp on 19 April. Mariri and the nearby village of Mbamba are at the heart of our work on human-honeyguide cooperation, made possible by the knowledge and partnership of the Mbamba honey-hunting community. We grieve alongside the people of Mariri, Mbamba, and the wider Niassa community, and stand in solidarity with the enduring spirit of conservation and unity.

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New paper on honeyguides guiding to snakes (and a mammal) rather than to bees

In a new study from the Honeyguide Research Project, we are excited to present evidence that honeyguides occasionally guide humans to non-bee animals. Our research – which builds on centuries of reports by a wide variety of human cultures across Africa – shows how the behaviour of honeyguides when guiding humans to wild bees’ nests, is spatially and acoustically similar to when honeyguides guide humans to other kinds of animal. In Niassa Special Reserve, where this research was conducted, we find this to be a rare behaviour (occurring on around 1% of honey-hunting interactions). We suggest that the most likely explanation for such behaviour is not as punishment for not previously rewarding the birds with beeswax, nor as a form of altruistic warning behaviour, but rather, due to cognitive mistakes in the birds’ spatial recall.

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Lailat and Jessica on fieldwork at Niassa

Lailat Guta and Jessica van der Wal returned to the Niassa Special Reserve, to visit our long-term collaborators in the Mbamba honey-hunting community and at Mariri Environmental Centre. As part of Lailat’s MSc research on the relationship between honey-hunting and the broader ecosystem, Lailat and Jessica are conducting interviews with honey-hunters and other knowledgeable individuals to document the economic and cultural values of trees and crops, and their dependence on bees.

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