Mice can distinguish close relatives from more distantly related individuals on the basis of scent signals, which enables them to avoid mating with close relatives and minimizes deleterious inbreeding.
In addition to mice, two species of bumblebee, in particular Bombus bifarius and Bombus frigidus, have been observed to use pheromones as a means of kin recognition to avoid inbreeding. For example, B. bifarius males display "patrolling" behavior in which they mark specific paths outside their nests with pheromones and subsequently "patrol" these paths. Unrelated reproductive females are attracted to the pheromones deposited by males on these paths, and males that encounter these females while patrolling can mate with them. Other bees of the Bombus species are found to emit pheromones as precopulatory signals, such as Bombus lapidarius.