Study shows lemurs use communal latrines as information exchange centers
Emily loves Justin - Stop global warming - Two more weeks till I graduate!: The exchange of information in public toilets is widespread. It also occurs in the world of white-footed sportive lemurs. Only instead of writing on the walls, they use scent-marks in order to communicate with their own kind.. In a study published online in Springer's journal Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, Iris Dröscher and Peter Kappeler from the German Primate Center (DPZ) have found that the urine left on latrine trees serves as a method to maintain contact with family members. It also serves as a means to inform an intruder that there is a male that will defend his partner. Latrines thus serve as information exchange centers and promote social bonding in territorial nocturnal animals that do not live in closely-knit groups.