Lemurs In Love Start To Smell Alike

Monday, February 3, 2014 - 11:20 in Psychology & Sociology

Lemurs In Love Wikimedia Commons, Frank Vassen Smell that? Yep, that’s love. No, it’s not the scent of red roses or fine chocolate – it’s the odor from a pair of lemur partners. A new study from Duke University has found that the more similar two lemurs’ scents are, the stronger the connection. Researchers studied the scents omitted from Coquerel’s sifaka lemurs, along with their scent-marking and sniffing activities during the breeding period. In a modern day lemur-romance, before offspring is on their minds, lemur couples get to know one another by investigating each other’s scent. After lemur lovers give birth to their little lemur babies, the mommy and daddy smell more like one another. Even if a lemur couple with kids hasn’t been together that long, their scents are more in sync than couples without offspring that have...

Read the whole article on PopSci

More from PopSci

Learn more about

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net