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Joined: Oct 1999
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Marty Offline OP
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A three-year-old jaguar kept at the Belize Zoo, west of Belize City, Belize.

Calvin Klein Obsession for Men doesn't just attract cougars...it also works on jaguars (actual jaguars).

Rather than paying an army of field assistants to observe the elusive cats, wiildlife biologists often deploy cameras in jungles from Guatemala to Nicaragua to capture images when these solitary, nocturnal cats pass by. But how do they lure the big cats in front of the camera? After testing many different fragrances, one researcher now swears by Obsession, which, according to The Guardian, contains synthetic "animal notes" similar to those secreted by cats.

Every bottle of Obsession is made with a chemical called civetone, which is derived from the scent glands of the cat-like civet, Miguel Ordenana, a biologist with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, told Scientific American. "What we think is that civetone resembles some sort of territorial marking to the jaguar, and so it responds by rubbing its own scent on it."

So if you plan on wearing Obsession on your next date, don't plan on having dinner in jaguar territory.

Source



Researchers in Guatemala sprayed a rag with Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men in order to capture rare images of jaguar behaviour.

Jaguars obsessed with Calvin Klein scent

Wildlife conservationists in Guatemala use Obsession for Men to lure jaguars to cameras in order to film them

It's advertised as the "pure essence of masculinity", a fragrance with a musky, sensual aroma that, by implication, women are bound to find irresistible. But what's not mentioned in the marketing is that Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men has also proved a hit with jaguars in the Guatemalan jungle.

Scientists are using the cologne to lure the elusive big cats to hidden cameras in the Maya biosphere reserve, a protected tropical rainforest spanning 8,100 sq miles, to help them record, monitor and protect the animals.

The jaguars have been filmed rubbing, sniffing and pawing objects sprayed with the scent, a reaction which perhaps Calvin Klein's perfumers had not anticipated .

The discovery was made by the Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronx zoo in New York. In an attempt to draw cheetahs to camera traps, it experimented with 23 different scents. Est�e Lauder's Beautiful detained the cats for two seconds on average, Revlon's Charlie lasted 15.5 seconds while Nina Ricci's L'Air du Temps managed 10.4 minutes. Obsession for Men's musky scent scored best: 11.1 minutes.

News spread to field researchers, including those in Guatemala. They sprayed it on a rag staked close to heat and motion-sensitive cameras in the hope jaguars would linger long enough for proper images.

The cologne did better than that. It prompted "cheek-rubbing behaviour" which yielded hair and DNA samples. Male and female jaguars seemed equally keen. The project has also captured seldom-seen jaguar mating rituals.

"We're just starting to get an idea of how jaguars behave in their habitat," Roan Balas McNab, WSC's Guatemala programme director, told the Wall Street Journal. "Before we used Obsession for Men we weren't able to get these images at all."

Ann Gottlieb, who helped create the scent, told the paper: "It's a combination of this lickable vanilla heart married to this fresh green top note - it creates tension."

The cologne also had synthetic "animal" notes like civet, a musky substance secreted by the cat of the same name, giving it particular sex appeal. "It sparks curiosity with humans and, apparently, animals."

Adverts for Obsession for Men, one of the world's top 10 best-selling men's scents, tend to feature models wearing little except glistening baby oil.

Researchers plan to expand the use of the cologne to wilderness areas in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Some buy the �41 bottles at duty-free shops en route to forests, others rely on donations.

Source


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Marty Offline OP
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You'll Never Guess How Biologists Lure Jaguars To Camera Traps

Field biologists are increasingly turning to camera traps to collect data. The set-up is really simple: when an animal passes in front of a camera, an infrared sensor becomes activated, and the camera silently snaps a photo. Sometimes – especially for camera traps designed to detect nocturnal species – an infrared flash, invisible to most mammals and birds, is used.

The photographs generated from camera traps can then provide researchers with far more data than they would be able to collect themselves with more traditional field observations. Often, this allows them to generate photographic evidence of a species’ natural behaviors without the confounding effects of direct human observation. It allows them to collect data continuously, throughout the day and night. And a camera trap can help researchers collect evidence of rare species or rare behaviors, as was demonstrated last week when a camera trap captured a golden eagle preying upon a sika deer. Or they could help researchers come face-to-face with an animal that might otherwise be dangerous or harmful. An array of camera traps is also more cost efficient than paying an army of field assistants to observe animal behavio or to conduct a census.

Camera traps are also far less invasive than most other forms of wildlife data collection, since critters don’t need to be trapped and released. And their presence is far less stressful for most animals compared with human observation.

Take the jaguar. The third largest cat in the world after tigers and lions, jaguars (Panthera onca) are nocturnal, solitary cats. Females’ territories can range from twenty-five to forty square kilometers, and males can roam areas twice as large. Due to primarily to habitat loss and to conflict with farmers, jaguar populations are declining; they’re considered “near threatened” by the IUCN. Oh, and a mature jaguar’s jaws are capable of biting down with two thousand pounds of force, the strongest of any cat. It subdues its prey in an ambush attack by biting down on the skull, its massive teeth puncturing the brain adjacent to each ear.

Put together, this makes jaguars well suited for for camera trap research. Still, human observers can do things like change the direction they’re looking. Cameras generally can’t. So biologists like Miguel Orde�ana try to hedge their bets and optimize the probability that an animal of interest will come by and trigger the camera’s shutter.

Orde�ana is a biologist with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. He’s an expert on camera traps, and when he’s not using them to understand the mountain lions who make their homes in the mountains of Los Angeles, he conducts field research on jaguars in Nicaragua.


Meow.

And the best way to convince a jaguar to trigger a camera trap? Calvin Klein Obsession for Men. Seriously.

According to Orde�ana, a Bronx Zoo researcher once tried a bunch of different scents and discovered that jaguars really liked the Calvin Klein cologne. A researcher might spray some of the cologne on a tree branch that sits within the camera’s field of view.


The molecular formula for civetone is C17-H30-O

What’s so special about this particular scent mixture? “It has civetone and it has vanilla extract,” he says. Civetone is a chemical compound derived from the scent glands of civets, smallish nocturnal cat-like critters native to the Asian and African tropics, and it’s one of the world’s oldest perfume ingredients. “What we think is that the civetone resembles some sort of territorial marking to the jaguar, and so it responds by rubbing its own scent on it,” he explained to me. And the vanilla might set off the cats’ curiosity response. No matter which compound is responsible for jaguars’ interest – or both – the key is that the scent gets them to stick around long enough to activate the camera’s shutter.

I asked Miguel if he avoids wearing Calvin Klein Obsession for Men while doing field work in Nicaragua. “I don’t really care, because the chances of me running into a jaguar are so slim.” Which, after all, is why he uses the camera traps in the first place.

Still, you probably wouldn’t want to wear the cologne and then take a nap, alone, at night, in the jungle. Then again, you probably wouldn’t want to do that anyway.



A jaguar captured by one of Miguel Ordenana's camera traps on January 7, 2013. Click photos to enlarge.

Update: It’s worth pointing out that most modern perfume makers use synthetic versions of civetone, extracted from palm oil, so that they don’t have to harass actual civets…

Source


Joined: Nov 2000
Posts: 5,563
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I never did like that fragrance. My boy friend kept getting obsession mixed up with Spellbound - by Loureal - which is what I wear. I'm smiling thinking of the 'animals' that's attracted!

Last edited by ScubaLdy; 11/21/13 05:25 AM.

Harriette
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Joined: Dec 2006
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Wow, this makes sense of a lot of things for me. I'm very allergic to cats, rapid fire sneeze and runny eyes. I can't be in houses where they live, like wise the Calvin Klein Obsession makes me sneeze, I can't be around women that wear it.


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