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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Lemurs’ love language is fragrance

These primates advertise their breeding status with a fruity, floral wrist scent.
One lemur waves its tale at another seated lemur

A male ring-tailed lemur (left) waves his tail at a female. Before such displays, males anoint their tails with a sweet-smelling compound that oozes from their wrist glands. Credit: Chigusa Tanaka/Japan Monkey Centre

Fashion designer Coco Chanel advised her clients to dab perfume ‘wherever you want to be kissed’. Ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) in Madagascar apparently agree, according to the first study to identify the primates’ use of scent to attract mates.

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Nature 580, 435 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-01106-0

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