Amber · Musk · Leather

Animalic

Skin, fur, civet, the smell of a body

animalic 66 notes 98 materials 6 anchors

What it smells like

Indole, skatole, para-cresol, castoreum. In trace these read as warmth, depth and intimacy. In quantity they read exactly as what they are. This is the facet that makes a perfume feel as though it belongs to a person.

Where it stops

Animalic borders White Floral through indole and Honey through phenylacetic acid. Those two bridges are the reason dirty florals exist.

Smells most like

civet - and in the same register, skatole, himalayan deer musk.

Notes that load on it

Notes from our catalogue whose position on this facet is 0.40 or higher, strongest first. A note is not filed under one facet: it carries a value on all 34 at once, and these are the ones where this axis is doing real work.

Materials that carry it

Real substances, each keyed by its CAS registry number, that an external perfumery vocabulary publishes with a term meaning this facet outright. This is the layer that makes a facet checkable against something outside our own database.

Materials carrying this facet, with registry number, source terms and regulatory status
Material CAS Terms Status
3-methylindole CAS 83-34-1 animal, civet, fecal
6-methylquinoline CAS 91-62-3 animal, civet, fecal
indole CAS 120-72-9 animal, fecal
lactoscatone CAS 21280-29-5 animal, civet
phenylacetic acid CAS 103-82-2 animal, civet
p-tolyl octanoate CAS 59558-23-5 animal, fecal
4-methoxybenzoic acid CAS 100-09-4 animal, fecal
1-phenylethenyl acetate CAS 2206-94-2 animal, fecal
1,2,3,4-tetrahydroquinoline CAS 635-46-1 animal, civet
6-methyl-1,2,3,4-tetrahydroquinoline CAS 91-61-2 animal, civet IFRA
7-hydroxy-3,7-dimethyloctanal;1H-indole CAS 68908-82-7 animal, fecal
4,4a,5,9b-tetrahydroindeno[1,2-d][1,3]dioxine CAS 18096-62-3 animal, fecal
7-hydroxy-3,7-dimethyloctanal;3-methyl-1H-indole CAS 68585-09-1 animal, fecal
cosmone CAS 259854-70-1 animal
muscone CAS 541-91-3 animal
civetone CAS 542-46-1 animal
p-cresol CAS 106-44-5 animal IFRA
piperine CAS 94-62-2 animal
muscogene CAS 40785-62-4 animal
piperidine CAS 110-89-4 animal
putrescine CAS 110-60-1 animal
ambrettolid CAS 123-69-3 animal
androstenol CAS 1153-51-1 animal
celestolide CAS 13171-00-1 animal
pyrrolidine CAS 123-75-1 animal
benzoic acid CAS 65-85-0 urine
oleyl alcohol CAS 143-28-2 animal
phenyl acetate CAS 122-79-2 animal
guaiyl butyrate CAS 73003-91-5 animal
propyl valerate CAS 141-06-0 animal

Showing 30 of 98. The full set ships with the published standard rather than being paginated here.

Reading the two flags

Declarable means the substance appears in Annex III of the EU Cosmetics Regulation, so it has to be named on the ingredient list once it passes a concentration threshold. IFRA means an IFRA Standard restricts or prohibits its use. Both are facts about the substance, not about any fragrance: a perfume can contain a declarable material below the threshold and never print it, and a restricted material used within its limit is used correctly.

The source also supplies no common name for a large share of materials, so those display as a bare registry number and are ranked last. They are kept because they are real evidence: dropping them would make the vocabulary look better described than it is.

Anchor terms

A facet on its own is just a word we chose. An anchor is what makes it checkable: a term in an external, independently maintained vocabulary of odour descriptions, built for perfumery materials rather than for us. The material list above is drawn from the direct terms only, because a partial term corroborates too weakly to stand as evidence on its own.

Direct Terms that mean this facet outright
  • animal
  • animalic
  • civet
  • fecal
  • fecal, like manure
  • urine
Partial Terms that lean this way but also load elsewhere

None

The rest of Amber · Musk · Leather

The other facets in this family. A note can load on any of them at the same time as this one, so they are neighbours rather than alternatives.

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