There are many reasons marmosets aren’t suitable pets. Number one reason on my personal list that maybe not many people know: their urine is God aweful. Like might be the worst scent at the zoo.
Also a scent that is commonly a surprise:
Chimpanzee natural body odor smells like baby powder! They are potentially the best smelling primate out there.
At Rotterdam zoo the cops were called once bc someone thought there was weed at the zoo but it was one of these bastards
this little friend smells like buttered popcorn
Unfortunately, I must admit that while the chimps I worked had a district baby powder scent, this is not universal to all chimps! According to other keepers, the most universally agreed scent for chimpies is poopy baby butt.
You may not know what a binturong looks like… but you probably know what it smells like. The binturong, or bearcat, of Southeast Asia smells distinctly like buttered popcorn! A new study from Duke on the chemical compound in this civit’s urine has determined that the scent’s source is 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (or 2-AP)– the same compound that makes your mouth water in a movie theater.
Using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, researchers were able to isolate and identify 29 chemical compounds in binturong urine. Since the animals pee while squatting, their feet and tails are often soaked, which leaves their distinctive aroma on both their bodies and in the branches and leaves of the trees they climb as a kind of scent trail.
What’s more, 2-AP was among the few compounds that lingered and became more dominant over time, a fact the researchers discovered when a rush airmail shipment of frozen binturong urine was delayed on a hot tarmac en route to co-author Thomas Goodwin of Hendrix College in Arkansas for analysis.
The remaining mystery is how they are able to form 2-AP at such low temperatures. In the popcorn popping process, for example, the compound is only released with high heat.
“If you were to make this compound, you would have to use temperatures above what most animals can achieve physiologically,” said Christine Drea, a professor of evolutionary anthropology at Duke who led the study. “How does this animal make a cooking smell, but without cooking?”
