CRESTED auklets use the citrus smell of the opposite sex to help pick out a mate – the first example of a bird using smell in social communication.
The Alaskan seabirds have a pungent tangerine smell in the breeding season. During courtship the birds perform a “ruff sniff” where they rub up against each other’s neck feathers, where the smell is strongest.
Now Julie Hagelin at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania and her team have shown that the birds are attracted to the smell. In experiments they preferred smelly feathers to musk or banana essence, or to feathers from a closely related…
