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.
If you would like to reuse any content from New Scientist, either in print or online, please contact the syndication department first for permission. New Scientist does not own rights to photos, but there are a variety of licensing options available for use of articles and graphics we own the copyright to.
All comments should respect the New Scientist House Rules. If you think a particular comment breaks these rules then please use the "Report" link in that comment to report it to us.
If you are having a technical problem posting a comment, please contact technical support.
Female lemurs avoid the wrong love in the dark
This article
Female lemurs avoid the wrong love in the dark
can be opened in url
http://newsmyriologue.blogspot.com/2012/12/female-lemurs-avoid-wrong-love-in-dark.html
Female lemurs avoid the wrong love in the dark
