Plagued by a Man-Eating Tiger, India Has an Odd Idea

Vets with tranquilizer darts, drones, and even a powerful breed of hunting dogs haven't been able to track down and take out a dangerous tiger in India suspected of killing 13. So now, forest rangers near Pandharkawada are turning to a bottle of something they hope will make the tigress "roll and cheek-rub" and send her into "absolute heaven." That would be Calvin Klein's Obsession cologne, the latest weapon in the hunt for the tigress named T1, who has been eluding searchers for months, and who spurred a Supreme Court ruling last month allowing her to be killed if necessary, per the Independent. The CK men's fragrance is being deployed because it's like catnip for some big cats, thanks to a compound called civetone, originally derived from a small mammal called the civet but now made artificially, per the New York Times.

"Whatever is in that, cats love it," a carnivore expert told Scientific American a few years back. T1's apparent killing spree has been going on for at least two years, and it's been a violent one: Victims have been dragged away by their necks and their flesh eaten in chunks. One of India's most well-known hunters says T1 has become more clever with each capture attempt, and that even though tigers don't typically eat humans, once they do, they often prefer the taste. T1 has now gone "psycho," he adds. Still, some locals protest the plan to shoot and kill T1, per the Times of India, with a petition begging to let her and her two cubs live. For now, the plan is to spritz the CK near camera traps, wait for T1 to show up, then try to tranquilize her or, if that fails, to kill her. (A rare white tiger killed a zookeeper in Japan.)