With most animal species checking out their competition is quite complicated and can involve a lot of things but a new study suggests that lemurs can just smell their fellow lemurs’ weaknesses. Lemurs can tell if other lemurs are not strong as they are just by taking a sniff of the scent that they leave behind. The study was done by Duke University on ring-tailed lemurs. Males are more aggressive towards other lemurs if they smell something unusual in their counterparts. Christine Drea, professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke University explains, “Our study shows that physical injury from peers dampens an animal’s scent signature, and in a way that its counterparts can detect.” The study was published recently in the journal Scientific Reports.
Both male and female lemurs have strong sweat glands on their genitalia and can emit some pretty unpleasant odor, but these secretions help the lemurs to get an idea of whether some other lemur approached their territory and it also helps them finding a mate. According to the research team the odor is “quite pungent and musky”. The researchers collected these secretions by using cotton swabs from ring-tailed lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina. For about 9 years, between 2007 to 2016, the team collected secretions from 23 lemurs while they were being treated for injuries. Lemurs can be quite competitive in their natural habitat- for food, for mates or just for telling the others who’s the boss, which usually leads to scuffles which involve a lot of scratching and biting and thus cuts and wounds.
Aracus, a male lemur fought a younger counterpart over a female- which resulted in an injured hand and cut cheek. Another lemur called Herodotus injured his big toe because of a bad landing. What injury does is that it changes the chemical makeup of the secretions and thereby the scent of the lemurs. Number of compounds also decreased by almost 10% when the lemurs are injured, proved the results of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry tests. Since the mating season is extremely competitive and injuries are more common during this time period and the odor was found to be muted. The team found out that although humans could not detect the changes but the lemurs could tell that the other lemur was not at its by the muted odor. Rachel Harris, part of the research team said, “These animals constantly monitor the physical condition of their competitors and respond quickly to any opportunity to climb the social ladder”.