Monday 3 February 2014

Lemur Parents Start to Smell Like Each Other

By Megan Gannon, News Editor | January 31, 2014 12:55pm ET

Maybe you've seen couples who start to look like each other, but lemurs in love actually start to smell alike.

Lemurs mimic their mate's scent-marking habits, and after they've had babies, the primate couples even start to give off similar aromas, new research found. The scientists behind the study think lemurs might sync up their scents to broadcast their relationship status or bolster their territory-marking powers.

The research focused on Coquerel's sifakas, an endangered species, living at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, N.C., which has the largest population of lemurs outside of Madagascar, the only place on Earth where these primates evolved.

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