IT IS the ultimate voice-recognition system. Without ever meeting him, a female lemur still knows the call of her father.
The ability to identify family members is important to avoid inbreeding. For large-brained mammals like apes that engage in complex social interactions this is relatively straightforward. Now, a team has shown that nocturnal grey mouse lemurs appear to do the same, even though lemurs are reared exclusively by their mothers (BMC Ecology, doi.org/jvx).
Study leader Sharon Kessler of Arizona State University in Tempe, believes that the young lemurs may associate calls similar to their own, or to those of male siblings, with their fathers.
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Female lemurs avoid the wrong love in the dark
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Female lemurs avoid the wrong love in the dark
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Female lemurs avoid the wrong love in the dark
