How Animals Use Smell to Send Coded Messages

ad was back. He played a little with the children, rubbed a few heads with his own, clawed at a wooden post, and then, standing erect with tail straight up, he backed towards a tree, sprayed, and left. The kids scampered over. They stood on their hind legs and carefully examined the spray—the family smell. It was a comforting scent containing specific chemicals called pheromones, evolutionarily adapted to specific purposes he intended. Urine spray has a strong odor that announces to other males in the area that this was his territory and these were his babies. The clawing, too, left a message, deposited by the scent glands between his toes. When a cat scratches an object, it leaves more than a visible mark; the animal leaves