BEHAVIOUR
They heard it on the acacia vine
Guineafowl exchange information on the best foraging sites when they retire to their sleeping trees at night.
Guineafowl always seem to know the best place to eat. | Photo: Damien Farine
Vulturine guineafowl live in fixed social groups that forage together. A study carried out by a team led by Damien Farine of the University of Zurich has now shown that guineafowl don’t just share information about good feeding sites within their own group: they also share such information with unrelated groups. A crucial role in this information-sharing process is played by the location of their sleeping places, which in their home region of the East African savannah are usually in acacia trees.
The researchers attached GP transmitters to 190 guineafowl from a total of 20 different groups. Their results revealed that different groups actually shared roosting sites. Then Farine’s team set up feeding sites with millet seeds at 17 locations within the home range of one group each time. In nine cases, the guineafowl group that roamed the area in question succeeded in finding the new, attractive food source. But a different guineafowl group with the same roosting spot almost always also appeared at the new food site, just a few days afterwards.
Farine’s team has concluded from this that sleeping trees serve as centres for exchanging information across the boundaries of the different groups. “We don’t know precisely how information about the feeding site is spread from one group to another”, says Farine. He assumes that it occurs unintentionally. Perhaps other groups notice if one group leaves for their foraging site especially purposefully on a morning. Or perhaps individual guineafowls can tell from their neighbours’ calls when they have found a good feeding place.
