One learns fascinating thing on the Internet; things, perhaps, that one wouldn’t want to. While the art of perfumery isn’t exactly the worst of them, and I deny that I’m affronted by its intricacies, I do wonder if I really wanted to know its, uh, animalistic side.

“It is a classic French way to make perfume,” he says, referring to animalic scents, the basest base notes. Civet oil, which is drawn from the anal gland of the civet cat, and which is said to smell a bit like blood. Castoreum, the animalic note in Cruel Intentions by Kilian, which comes from a gland in the guts of a beaver. Perfume critic Chandler Burr has said that it smells of “leather, urine, smokey tar and of anus.

Via Untoward.