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As many primates live in forests where visibility is limited, the ability to detect the aroma of distant fruit and navigate odor plumes would be highly adaptive. Our study is the first to investigate this ability with strepsirrhine primates.

We tested the ability of a group of ring‐tailed lemurs to detect hidden fruit from afar using scent alone. We hid containers in the underbrush of a semi‐natural forest, some baited with real cantaloupe and some with sham cantaloupe, 4–17 m from a path routinely used by the lemurs. Crucially, the containers were not visible from the path. Therefore, the lemurs had to use olfactory cues, but did not have to prioritize them to locate the bait.

The lemurs found the real cantaloupe on days that the wind blew the scent of the fruit toward the trail. They did not find the sham cantaloupe. Upon detecting the odor of the bait, the lemurs sniffed the air at one or …