(06-19-2015 6:57 AM)Paradox Wrote:  In 1921 Coco Chanel changed the fragrance world with her ever-popular Chanel No. 5. In need of a musky base note, Coco used scrapings of sexual pheromones from the perianal (read: anal) gland of the Abyssinian civet cat– sexual pheromones that are found in cat pee.

So, how does this make Chanel No. 5 a marketplace winner? It all has to do with a mind-control parasite called Toxoplasma gondii. The tiny protozoan may be getting into our brains and tricking us into liking cats– along with certain perfumes.
http://www.torontostandard.com/daily-cab...s-cat-pee/

I posted the above in response to someones post about cat piss being a putative.

I set it aside for future research since I have always wanted to research the use of Civit scents in perfumes and colognes (this hobby is reading intensive).

I read the article and decided to follow up with research into Toxoplasma gondii.

This is where I found some interesting information about gene manipulation:

The primary mechanisms of T. gondii–induced behavioral changes in rodents is now known to occur through epigenetic remodeling in neurons which govern the associated behaviors; for example, it modifies epigenetic methylation to cause hypomethylation of arginine vasopressin-related genes in the medial amygdala to greatly decrease predator aversion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasma_gondii

Interesting. I seem to remember Methylene Blue being able to wipe out this parasite, in higher doses if not in lower. I take it every day, so perhaps I'm not affected?

There was an article I read some time ago in MAPS mentioning that Civet naturally contained high doses of Alpha -nol (high for a natural source, as I read it.) Presumably it contains a variety of other pheromones as well. The reactions seem like a combinaton of Androstenone and Androstanone, more than anything.

(06-19-2015 1:09 PM)Ekscentra Wrote:  There was an article I read some time ago in MAPS mentioning that Civet naturally contained high doses of Alpha -nol (high for a natural source, as I read it.) Presumably it contains a variety of other pheromones as well. The reactions seem like a combinaton of Androstenone and Androstanone, more than anything.

You talking about this article? http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v12n1/12126ott.html

Pheromones, The Quintessence Of Philtres

Although the truffle might seem out of place here, in fact it was shown in 1981 to be a potent source of androstenol, known since 1944 to be a component of boar-testes, and patented in the early 1970s for use in artificial insemination of sows [Maugh II 1982]. In 1974, androstenol was discovered to be a component of human male axillary perspiration, and later to stimulate sexual interest in human beings. Truffles are one especially rich source, which accounts for their "musky" aroma, and here they are compounded with "amber," in reality ambergris, a pheromone-rich secretion of sperm whales, Physeter catodon, like sperm-whale spermaceti, used in perfumery and cosmetics. These pheromonal ingredients lend verisimilitude to the first of our Italian philtreformulae, the second of which features musk, both of the civet cat (various species, family Viverridae) and the musk deer (Moschus moschiferus). Musks, likewise from the North American musk ox (Ovibos moschatus), derive their name via Latin and Greek, from the Sanskrit muska, "testicle, scrotum," and consist of oleaginous secretions of special glands that produce sex-attractant pheromones (pheromones are hormone-like substances acting especially between members of the same species, here in mating, thus being allomones, of benefit to the emitting species; they can also serve as kairomones, or of benefit to another, or a receiving species, who might exploit them as attractants to predation). Musks have a long and storied use in perfumery, again as sexattractants, and the discovery that androstenol appears to be a human sex-attractant pheromone has now led to its use in male colognes and after-shaves, often touted in skinmagazines as infallible female lures. Similarly, the masculine pheromone androstadienone is said to attract women; the female pheromone estratetraene, to attract men [Holden 1999]. I have known women who occasionally rub a bit of their own vaginal secretions behind their ears, when they feel the need of such "passion-perfume" to "inphiltrate" some man or other. This points to the urgent need for concerted research into our human pheromones, which of course militates against the absurd superstition of the Judaeo-Christian world, that human beings are not, after all, animals. But we do indeed, like all mammals, possess non-olfactory vomeronasal neuroreceptors believed to respond to pheromones, and encoded by some 100 genes in rodents [Hines 1997; Holy et al. 2000]. Interestingly, neural signals from the binding of pheromones to these receptors bypass those ordinary olfactory pathways, and possibly the so-called "higher cognitive centers" [Dorries 1997], and go thence to the amygdala and the hypothalamus, in the so-called midbrain, which separates the brain-stem from the cerebral cortex (connecting to an accessory [posterior] olfactory bulb attached to the cerebral cortex) [Keverne 1999]. As might be expected, both the amygdala and hypothalamus are thought to control our emotional responses.

(06-19-2015 1:39 PM)Paradox Wrote:  You talking about this article? http://www.maps.org/news-letters/v12n1/12126ott.html

Pheromones, The Quintessence Of Philtres

Although the truffle might seem out of place here, in fact it was shown in 1981 to be a potent source of androstenol, known since 1944 to be a component of boar-testes, and patented in the early 1970s for use in artificial insemination of sows [Maugh II 1982]. In 1974, androstenol was discovered to be a component of human male axillary perspiration, and later to stimulate sexual interest in human beings. Truffles are one especially rich source, which accounts for their "musky" aroma, and here they are compounded with "amber," in reality ambergris, a pheromone-rich secretion of sperm whales, Physeter catodon, like sperm-whale spermaceti, used in perfumery and cosmetics. These pheromonal ingredients lend verisimilitude to the first of our Italian philtreformulae, the second of which features musk, both of the civet cat (various species, family Viverridae) and the musk deer (Moschus moschiferus). Musks, likewise from the North American musk ox (Ovibos moschatus), derive their name via Latin and Greek, from the Sanskrit muska, "testicle, scrotum," and consist of oleaginous secretions of special glands that produce sex-attractant pheromones (pheromones are hormone-like substances acting especially between members of the same species, here in mating, thus being allomones, of benefit to the emitting species; they can also serve as kairomones, or of benefit to another, or a receiving species, who might exploit them as attractants to predation). Musks have a long and storied use in perfumery, again as sexattractants, and the discovery that androstenol appears to be a human sex-attractant pheromone has now led to its use in male colognes and after-shaves, often touted in skinmagazines as infallible female lures. Similarly, the masculine pheromone androstadienone is said to attract women; the female pheromone estratetraene, to attract men [Holden 1999]. I have known women who occasionally rub a bit of their own vaginal secretions behind their ears, when they feel the need of such "passion-perfume" to "inphiltrate" some man or other. This points to the urgent need for concerted research into our human pheromones, which of course militates against the absurd superstition of the Judaeo-Christian world, that human beings are not, after all, animals. But we do indeed, like all mammals, possess non-olfactory vomeronasal neuroreceptors believed to respond to pheromones, and encoded by some 100 genes in rodents [Hines 1997; Holy et al. 2000]. Interestingly, neural signals from the binding of pheromones to these receptors bypass those ordinary olfactory pathways, and possibly the so-called "higher cognitive centers" [Dorries 1997], and go thence to the amygdala and the hypothalamus, in the so-called midbrain, which separates the brain-stem from the cerebral cortex (connecting to an accessory [posterior] olfactory bulb attached to the cerebral cortex) [Keverne 1999]. As might be expected, both the amygdala and hypothalamus are thought to control our emotional responses.

Yes, that was the one! Good find.