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Male lemurs avoid skirmishes with other males by smearing their own
scent over their tails. Carried like a banner high over their head, the
smelly tail warns off rivals and, until the height of the mating season,
helps males to avoid a fight. Courting rituals are just one ingredient of
Animal Behaviour (Blandford, pp 226, £14.99), a rich mixture of essays
and photographs edited by Tim Halliday, head of biology at the Open University,
Milton Keynes, with other contributions from around the world. Other topics
include ‘creating a home’, which covers not only techniques but materials
from snake skins for bird nests to seaweed hides woven by shrimps.