Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biology (IFM)

The results of the present study show that spider monkeys have a well developed olfactory sensibility for the amino acids tested. The data support the idea that molecular structure of the different substances has an important impact on the detectability of an odorant, even though different chiralities had little impact.

The substances used in this study were also used in similar studies for humans and mice. For the amino acids tested, the results for the detection thresholds vary between species. The L-proline was, however, harder to detect for all three species. Thus, an interesting next step would be to test other species for the same set of amino acids, to see if prolines are generally harder to detect.