Ring-tailed lemurs engage in ‘stink-flirting’ to attract mates

'It's a costly thing to do since it can end in such a gruesome fight,' says lead researcher Amber Walker-Bolton

Ring-tailed lemurs are social animals and live in large groups dominated by females (Thomas Lohnes)

It would be a novel and likely unsuccessful approach for most, but "stink flirting", or the spraying of a smelly scent, seems to work for the male ring-tailed lemur when it comes to attracting a mate.

However, the first in-depth study of the creatures' behaviour also established that it can lead to friendships dissolving between males.

“Stink-flirting displays are done more often by dominant males,” said the study's lead author Amber Walker-Bolton, of the University of Toronto’s department of Anthropology.

“This behaviour is also very costly because these males are met with higher levels of aggression than if they were to do other types of scent-marking. So there's definitely something unique about this type of behaviour.”

Ring-tailed lemurs are social animals and live in large groups which are dominated by females.

Like other types of lemurs, the primates maintain social bonds with lower-ranking mates often excluded.

Scent is important to ring-tailed lemurs and males use their scent glands to mark territory and engage in “stink-fighting” – where they rub their tails in their scent before waving it at an opponent.

But “stink-flirting” is less understood.

“One morning I was watching a huddle and saw an outsider male approach and try to waft his tail to a female,” said Ms Walker-Bolton, who did her research at the Berenty Reserve in Madagascar.

“Well, right away he was met with all this aggression from the group, and it made me question why they would go through this just to be met with a negative result.”

Although dominant males – from within and without the group – engage in stink-flirting the most, outsider males perform the ritual at a higher rate.

But as a result, they're also met with much higher rates of aggression from females and other males.

“It could be a way for them to show their rank or it may simply be an alternative mating strategy in terms of transferring to a new group to gain mating opportunities,” said Walker-Bolton, whose research is published in the American Journal of Primatology.

“One thing is for sure, there's a lot of aggression directed towards them, and it's a costly thing to do since it can end in such a gruesome fight.”

It is difficult to measure the success of “stink-flirting” when it comes to actual mating, but Ms Walker-Bolton said it was common for a female lemur to lash out and slap an opposing male across the face.

She was also able to measure how often females presented themselves, a mark of how receptive they were to the displays.

“Females don't present every time, and they don't present to every male, but it's interesting that males who engaged in a greater number of stink-flirting displays were presented to more often,” she said.