Today I Learned …

Obsession, the cologne by Calvin Klein, doesn’t only draw the interest of humans. It also works its magic on big cats — in fact, the BBC reports that Banham Zoo in the UK is requesting that people send them old bottles of the cologne as a treat for the lions, tigers, and leopards at the zoo.

According to Mental Floss, “Like many perfumes, the key ingredient in Calvin Klein’s Obsession is animal musk. The musk used in Obsession is civetone, a pheromone secreted by small cat-like mammals called civets. When big cats like tigers and lions get a whiff of the scent, they go nuts for it and rub themselves all over the source. Experts suspect that cats interpret civetone as a kind of territorial marker and roll around in it as a way to mark the area with their own scent.”