Odour-based kin discrimination in the cooperatively breeding meerkat.

Abstract excerpt

Kin recognition is a useful ability for animals, facilitating cooperation among relatives and avoidance of excessive kin competition or inbreeding. In meerkats, Suricata suricatta, encounters between unfamiliar kin are relatively frequent, and kin recognition by phenotype matching is expected to avoid inbreeding with close relatives. Here, we investigate whether female meerkats are able to discriminate the scent...

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