Female cheetahs at the Bronx Zoo in New York just love Calvin Klein's Obsession for Men perfume.

A cheetah at the Bronx Zoo in New York rubs a log that has been sprayed with perfume

No, they don't dab their favorite perfume behind their ears, but they do enjoy rubbing up against tree stumps sprayed with the scent.

Instead this is part of a program of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which operates New York City's zoos and aquariums, to keep animals healthy and happy.

"We want to enrich the daily lives of the animals, both physically and psychologically," Diana Reiss, senior research scientist at the Conservation Society, told reporter. "One of the ways we do that is offering our animals different kinds of scents to give them variety."

The scents provide a way to stimulate the animals. Reiss said smell is essential to the lives of animals. "With our cheetahs at the Bronx Zoo, we worked from inexpensive perfumes to expensive perfumes," she said. "The one they respond to the most is Calvin Klein Obsession for Men. But they also respond to inexpensive perfumes."

The wildlife workers test the animals' response to various scents by spraying tree stumps with different perfumes or placing cinnamon or other spices in the animals' environment. "We'll observe how much time they spend in that area," Reiss said.

But not all animals have high-class tastes when it comes to scents, Reiss said. Female cheetahs at the Bronx Zoo may rank Obsession for Men as their favorite perfume. But forget that for the pumas and lynx at the Queens Zoo. They'll take skunk urine extract any day.

(Agencies)