spider monkeys make perfume from crushed leaves

In another installment of Animals Are Smarter Than You Think, researchers are mighty suspicious that black-handed spider monkey males daub themselves with homemade cologne.

Laska’s team found, in ac­cord with a past study, that the spi­der mon­keys swiped the fra­grant mix on­ly on their arm­pits and breast­bone ar­eas, and that this oc­curred in­de­pen­d­ent­ly of time of day, sea­son, tem­per­a­ture or hu­mid­i­ty. The previous study—published in 2000—also found, con­sis­tent with the new one, that males do it more often than females.

All these con­sid­er­a­tions, ac­cord­ing to the auth­ors of both stu­dies, clash with the idea that the lo­tions func­tion as bug re­pel­lents or skin med­i­ca­tions.

No word on whether the spider monkeys have perfected the art of the pick-up line.