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First published online November 19, 2007
Journal of Experimental Biology 210, 4169-4178 (2007)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2007
doi: 10.1242/jeb.012237

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Olfactory sensitivity for putrefaction-associated thiols and indols in three species of non-human primate

Matthias Laska^1,*, Rosa Mariela Rivas Bautista², Daniela Höfelmann³, Vera Sterlemann³ and Laura Teresa Hernandez Salazar²

¹ IFM Biology, Linköping University, 581 83 Linköping, Sweden
² Instituto de Neuro-Etologia, Universidad Veracruzana, 91000 Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico
³ Department of Medical Psychology, University of Munich, 80336 Munich, Germany

View larger version (6K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 1. Chemical structure of the thiols and indols used as odour stimuli.

View larger version (26K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 2. Performance of four spider monkeys in discriminating between various dilutions of a given odorant and the odourless solvent. Each data point represents the percentage of correct choices from 30 decisions. The four different symbols represent data from each of the four individual animals tested. Filled symbols indicate dilutions that were not discriminated significantly above the chance level (binomial test, P>0.05; chance level shown by broken line).

View larger version (25K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 3. Performance of three squirrel monkeys in discriminating between various dilutions of a given odorant and the odourless solvent. Each data point represents the percentage of correct choices from at least 30 decisions. The three different symbols represent data from each of the three individual animals tested. Filled symbols indicate dilutions that were not discriminated significantly above the chance level (binomial test, P>0.05; chance level shown by dashed line).

View larger version (26K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 4. Performance of three pigtail macaques in discriminating between various dilutions of a given odorant and the odourless solvent. Each data point represents the percentage of correct choices from 30 decisions. The three different symbols represent data from each of the three individual animals tested. Filled symbols indicate dilutions that were not discriminated significantly above the chance level (binomial test, P>0.05; chance level shown by broken line).

View larger version (8K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 5. Olfactory detection threshold values (expressed as vapour phase concentrations) of the spider monkeys, the squirrel monkeys and the pigtail macaques as a function of carbon chain length of the thiols tested. The solid line indicates the regression with the best goodness-of-fit according to the Spearman rank-correlation test.

View larger version (14K): [in this window] [in a new window]   Fig. 6. Comparison of the olfactory detection threshold values (expressed as vapour phase concentrations) of the spider monkeys, the squirrel monkeys and the pigtail macaques for the odorants tested with those of human subjects (van Gemert, 2003). Data points of the three monkey species represent individual threshold values, and data points of the human subjects represent mean values from different studies.