Lemurs tap into technology to access rainforest ambience and smell of mangoes at Scotland's safari park

A unique experiment at Blair Drummond near Stirling has shown that five red ruffed lemurs became highly engaged with technology that can change their environment , from creating a rainforest ambiance to flooding their enclosure with the scent of lavender and mango.

They became even more interested and engaged when humans were triggering these sensory experiences, researchers at Glasgow University have found.

Visitors to Blair Drummond near Stirling were offered the opportunity to collaborate with the park’s five red-ruffed lemurs using the custom-built, computer-controlled CreatureConnect system which activated sensory experiences in the enclosure.

The lemurs chose to engage most often with CreatureConnect when they could collaborate with humans to control the stimuli, suggesting they were finding value in the experience.

Dr Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas leads the University of Glasgow’s Animal-Computer Interaction research group and is the paper’s corresponding author. She said: “Technology can enable humans to communicate with each other directly in lots of different ways. We chat on the phone, we text each other, we video call, and those shared experiences can enrich our lives.

“As part of our ongoing research relationship with Blair Drummond Safari Park, we wanted to explore whether offering shared control of technology could create a bridge between species that would be valuable for both.

“Our findings suggest for the first time that we can not only share experiences with other species using technology, but that, in this case, red-ruffed lemurs want to share them with us and prefer sharing to solo control.”

The custom-built, computer-controlled CreatureConnect system was split into two devices, with one placed on either side of the lemur enclosure’s glass partition.

On both sides, it provided a digital interface which gave humans and lemurs alike control over the triggering of sounds, video footage, and scents.

On the animals’ side, a box with speakers, a screen and a device to release scents was fitted. When a lemur approached the device, a distance sensor triggered sounds like music or rainforest ambience, visuals including an underwater scene and abstract patterns, and the smell of apple, lavender and mango.

Moving closer raised the intensity of the stimuli, while moving further away dialled them down.

On the visitors’ side, humans controlled the stimuli using sliders on a touchscreen display, allowing them to adjust the intensity of the sensory modes when it was their turn to control the system.

The team tested four variations of the way the system worked to gather data on the responses of the human and animal users to each, working from fully automatic triggering of the stimuli to human-only, lemur-only and shared human-lemur control.

The found that lemurs were least engaged when they had full control, and most engaged when they shared control with humans. They also had clear preferences for the content they engaged with, showing the greatest response to high-intensity scents, bright visuals, and medium-intensity sound.

Humans were similarly engaged by shared control, with survey responses showing high levels of engagement, enjoyment and empathy towards the animals. Visitors stayed longer at the enclosure, watched the lemurs more closely, and talked more often about the animals’ behaviour and welfare.

Jiaqi Wang, a PhD student at the University of Glasgow’s School of Computing Science, is the paper’s first author. She said: “When we were designing the system, we suspected that humans would respond more strongly to shared control than the lemurs, and that lemurs would prefer to do their own thing.

“We were surprised to find that the lemurs do not necessarily want to control the device alone. Instead, they seem to want to share, and that has a very clear impact on visitors’ interest in the lemurs and their desire to spend more time with and learn about them.”

The research expands on an ongoing research relationship between Glasgow computing scientists and zookeepers at Blair Drummond Safari Park.

The research will be presented at the CHI 2026 conference in Barcelona on Monday 13 April.