Dolphins, honey guides and golden eagles are man's best friends

Dolphins that herd fish into waiting nets, birds that guide hungry tribesmen to bee hives full of honey and eagles that capture fast moving prey for human hunters are to be revealed as some of mankind's best friends in the animal kingdom.



The ability of dogs to fetch a pair of slippers, assist the blind or help round up sheep may be well known.

But there are many other creatures in the animal kingdom who are just as adept at working for humans.

While South American fishermen use dolphins to help them catch fish, tribesman in Africa employ birds to find honey and hunters in Asia train young eagles to bring down prey for them.

They are among examples of animal behaviour known as "interspecies collaboration", where wild creatures have evolved to work with humans to help them find food.


Experts believe these relationships provide clues about how humans first learned how to exploit wild animals before training them and later domesticating them.

Tom Hugh-Jones, part of a team who have documented the relationships, said: "These relationships are particularly unusual as it often appears to be the animals that are initiating the behaviour and giving the humans instructions."


The collaborations are revealed in a new landmark BBC series, called Human Planet, which charts how humans have been able to spread to and live in almost every environment found on the Earth.

The most extraordinary of these relationships involves a group of dolphins in Laguna, Brazil, that herd fish towards fishermen standing in shallow water and even signal when the men should cast their nets. The dolphins can then pick off the confused fish that try to escape.

Mr Hugh-Jones, a producer on the series, said: "The dolphins drive the fish into the shallow water where the fishermen are standing and then they seem to make a very purposeful and energetic dive, often leaping out of the water, which the fishermen use as a signal that the time is right to cast their nets.

"It appears to be something that happened a lot more in human history before nets and technology made fishing easier."

In another example, a bird known as a honey guide uses darting movements and whistles to guide Maasai tribesmen, from Kenya, to bee hives, which the humans break into for honey, before giving the bee larvae to the bird.

"The birds are solitary and are abandoned by their parents when quite young, so this behaviour is probably ingrained in their genetics rather than being something they have learned," said Jane Atkins, who directed the sequences with the honey bird.

"It suggests this is a very old relationship. The Maasai people go out on to the Savannah with their cattle but with few food or snacks, so they use these birds to find honey to eat."

Alan Beck, director of the Centre for the Human-Animal Bond at Purdue University, Indiana, said: "These probably are examples of relationships with animals that go back to very early in human history when we started to learn how to use animals to help us.

"There are interesting examples because of the way the relationship is. I think we are beginning as a society to understand that our relationship with animals is more part of our joint strategy for survival than has been appreciated in the past."

The programme also shows how Kazakh hunters in Mongolia use golden eagles to hunt food.

By raiding the nests of eagles, they capture young chicks that they can train to hunt the foxes and other mammals that hide on the vast frozen wastes of the Altai Mountains.

When fully grown, the birds are carried by the hunters on horse back and can bring down foxes as large as themselves, rabbits, marmots and even young wolves. As a reward, the eagles are given the lungs of their prey to eat.

In other parts of the world, fishermen also use otters and cormorants to help them catch fish, while in Burma, wild forest elephants are captured and used to help the local populations carry timber out of the jungles.

New research is also now suggesting that the extent of animals' ability to co-operate with humans is far greater than previously imagined.

Scientists at Cambridge University have found that jays can co-operate with humans on problem solving tasks. They learned how coordinate an action with a human, to win a food reward.

Ljerka Ostojic, who has been conducting research on the birds, said: "Jays are not a social bird as they are very territorial, yet they are highly intelligent like other members of the crow family.

"We have found that they are capable of solving complex physical problems along with a human partner."

By Richard Gray, Science Correspondent
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/wildlife/8235027/Dolphins-honey-guides-and-golden-eagles-are-mans-best-friends.html