Lemurs Like To Make An Informative Visit To The Bathroom

Thursday, October 16, 2014 - 12:50 in Psychology & Sociology

Human bathroom walls contain messages that are wonderfully informative about our modern condition - they can tell you who to call if you have an evolutionary mandate to procreate or even notify you that someone else once peed in the same spot. White-footed sportive lemurs learn a lot about each other due to bathrooms also. Only instead of writing on the walls, they use scent-marks to communicate with their own kind. A study published online in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology by Iris Dröscher and Peter Kappeler from the German Primate Center (DPZ) found that the urine left on latrine trees serves as a method to maintain contact with family members. It also serves as a means to inform an intruder that there is a male that will defend his partner. read more

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