Greater Honeyguide

Greater honeyguides are brood parasites whose chicks hatch with specialized bill hooks used to kill host nestlings. Unlike cuckoo chicks that outcompete hosts through size or begging, honeyguide chicks commit active infanticide, ensuring they receive all parental investment. The hooks are shed after killing is complete.

This species also demonstrates remarkable interspecies mutualism with humans. Honeyguides lead traditional honey hunters to beehives through distinctive calls and flight patterns, receiving beeswax after humans open the hives. This learned cooperation - mutualism with one species, parasitism with another - shows behavioral flexibility across relationship types.

The business parallel illuminates how organizations can simultaneously cooperate and compete with different partners. A company might maintain genuine mutualistic relationships with some stakeholders while parasitizing others. Platform companies often demonstrate this pattern - providing genuine value to users while extracting value from complementors or suppliers.

Honeyguide infanticide also demonstrates that competition within organizations can be as fierce as competition between them. Siblings fighting for parental resources, employees competing for managerial attention, divisions competing for budget allocation - internal competition often determines success more than external competition.