Horny lemurs use body odor as a pick-up line
Snuggly, stinky, lemurs. (Daniel C. Devor/)For ring-tailed lemurs, love stinks. They practically use body odor as a pick-up line, with ring-tails rubbing their fluffy tails into scent glands on their wrists so that they might wave the aroma around enticingly.Lemur researchers have witnessed this behavior in the wild for years, and knew the stinky courtship ritual was uniquely important to the animals’ way of life. But they weren’t sure what exactly made the smell so intriguing to females. In a paper released earlier this month in Current Biology, olfaction experts at the University of Tokyo break down the chemistry of this natural cologne in the hopes of unlocking its sexy secrets.The researchers started by analyzing the smelly liquid secreted from male lemur’s wrist glands. They collected samples twice per month for several years and checked which kind of chemicals were at play. They found that three different odor compounds were...