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This is scientific Americans' 60 Second Science.

I'm Jason Goldman.

When preparing for a date, a human might use a small spritz of cologne or perfume.

And male ring-tailed leemers also splash on some cologne to impress the females.

The only difference is they secrete their own sense from glands near their wrists.

And during the breeding season, the males rub the secretions from their wrists onto their

tails, and then wave the tails near females.

Researchers actually called this behavior stink flirting.

Biologists already knew that leemers have scent glands and that they use them to communicate their social rank or to identify their territories.

Scientists also knew that sometimes males use their scent glands as part of a dominance display against potential rivals.

But nobody had really looked to see whether the females were relying on the male sense as part

of their mate selection process.

Nobody until Kazushige tohara, a biological chemist at the University of Tokyo.

Working at a wildlife laboratory, he and his team collected the secretions from male ring-tailed

lemur's risk glands twice a month for several years.

In an email, he described the male scent as fruity and floral.

The researchers identified three chemical compounds in the secretions

that were in higher concentrations during the breeding season,

which suggested that these chemicals, all of which are long-chain fatty

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