Big game cats like lions or tigers are attracted to Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men more than any other fragrance, scientists have found.
Researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society's Bronz Zoo in New York experimented with a range of different fragrances and how two cheetahs reacted to them.
To their surprise, the cats spent more than 11 minutes sniffing and nuzzling up to a tree sprayed with Obsession for Men.
The perfume's effect on big cats is so potent that it is even used in the field by conservationists.
One program director in Guatemala has been using the perfume since 2007 to to try and determine the jaguar's population in the jungle.
Roan Balas McNab who works in a a protected tropical forest uses the perfume's unique properties to keep jaguars still enough so that he can take images of them using motion-sensitive cameras.
'But this technique is only effective if animals pass through the cameras' detection range and we get adequate photos,' Mr. McNab told the Wall Street Journal.
After hearing about its potency, his team tried spraying the perfume onto a rag tied to a stake in the ground.
To their amazement three times as many jaguars walked by and those that did lingered nearby making them far easier to identify.
The use of Obsession has even led to the researchers being able to capture footage of jaguar's mating rituals, something that had been rarely seen before the perfume was used.
'We're just starting to get an idea of how jaguars behave in their habitat,' Mr. McNab says. 'Before we used Obsession for Men we weren't able to get these images at all.'
Obsession for Men launched in 1986, just as the Calvin Klein brand was pushing the boundaries of sexuality in advertising. Early ads typically featured nude models and little else.
Ann Gottlieb, one of the creators of Obsession for Men's distinctive cat-friendly scent says the scent had synthetic 'animal' notes.
'It's a combination of this lickable vanilla heart married to this fresh green top note—it creates tension,' she told the paper. 'It sparks curiosity with humans and, apparently, animals.'
One of the main problems for scientists is being able to source enough of Obsession for Men as it is hard to find in shops near where much of the research is carried out.
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