A recipe for romance? The most bizarre animal origins of perfume scents revealed

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, you may be looking to buy your loved one their favourite perfume for a personal, romantic gift.
But the truth behind some of the world’s most beloved fragrances will likely make your stomach turn than give you butterflies.
Many popular perfume notes are based on smells produced by animals, even relying on excrement and mating scents to make the smells we love.
Rich Quelch from the fragrance experts at Lifestyle Packaging rounds up the most bizarre and shocking origins of common perfume ingredients…
Musk from a male deer
Musk is a familiar scent to see listed on perfume advertisements, with its rich earthy and woody base notes.
But unbeknown to most, the smell of musk is modelled on the blackish-brown secretions a male Musk Deer releases to attract a mate in the wild.
Musk is also used to improve the quality of perfume by keeping lighter notes from evaporating too quickly, giving a long-lasting fragrance. It has been known to be used in popular perfumes such as Chanel No. 5.
This species of deer has to be killed to obtain the musk pod, so for ethical and financial reasons, most perfume brands will now use synthetic versions instead. In fact, almost all perfumes today include a synthetic musk as part of building layers of fragrance.
However, illegal hunting and trading of musk continue to be an issue, so be sure to only buy perfume from cruelty-free brands that are open about their ingredients.
Civetone from the Civet cat
Civet musk, or civetone, comes from the anal glands of Civet Cats and was once a very popular ingredient in perfumes.
The farming of Civet Cats typically involved keeping animals in unpleasant conditions, often in cages. The animal’s heightened stress is said to improve increase the amount of civetone produced and involves painfully scraping the glands to secrete the all-important liquid.
Nowadays, most perfumes will typically use a synthetic alternative for a more ethical approach to creating the same musky fragrance and fixative properties.
A synthetic version of civetone can be commonly found in Calvin Klein’s Obsession for Men. The cologne has even had success luring big cats such as tigers and cheetahs thanks to their attraction to the pheromone found in civetone.
Vanilla from a beaver
Unfortunately, for those who love the smell of vanilla, the origin of this fragrance is anything but sweet.
While most vanilla fragrances can be extracted from plant sources such as vanilla pods, you may not know that perfumes and even baking products have been known to use castoreum.
Castoreum is a sticky, dark substance that beavers secrete from their castor sac to mark their territory. Perfumers would anaesthetise a beaver and ‘milk’ the beaver’s glands to get this fluid.
Not only has castoreum been used to create the sweet aroma of vanilla, it’s also said to give a leathery, musky note to perfumes.
Getting castoreum in large quantities is difficult and expensive, not to mention unethical. In most cases, an artificial alternative is used instead. Smell castoreum in Amouage Memoir Woman, Dior Diorama, Givenchy Ysatis and Guerlain Shalimar.
Ambergris from the Sperm Whale
Finally, there’s ambergris, one of the most grotesque and bizarre scents still used by some perfume houses.
Made from the Sperm Whale’s digestive fluids, ambergris helps give a musky, sweet, earthy smell to perfume, as well as enabling perfumes to stick to skin and last longer.
In the US, it’s now illegal to sell ambergris however, in the UK and other international markets, it’s considered a natural by-product so is still legal to use.
However, as the ingredient is so rare, ambergris is extremely expensive meaning it’s not commonly found in perfumes you can buy on the high street. Back in 2020, a Thai fisherman found the world’s largest sample of ambergris, valued at a staggering £2.4 million.
High-end perfumeries today collect ambergris from the ocean once it has been excreted. A documentary released last year revealed how beauty powerhouse Dior still sources ambergris to use in some of its most popular fragrances, including Miss Dior and Dior Sauvage.