Paternal 'Voice' Recognition - How Even Tiny Animals Avoid Inbreeding
Friday, November 30, 2012 - 09:03
in Biology & Nature
Paternal recognition, being able to identify males from your father's line, is one way that mammals avoid inbreeding - some can do this is through recognizing the calls of paternal kin. This was thought to occur only in large-brained animals having complex social groups, but a new study shows it can happen in a tiny, solitary primate. The study finds that the grey mouse lemur (Microcebus murinus) – a small-brained, solitary foraging mammal endemic to Madagascar – is able to recognize paternal relatives via vocalizations, thus providing evidence that this is not dependent upon having a large brain and a high social complexity, as previously suggested. read more