Valentine's Day: Whipsnade Zoo’s lions want your unwanted perfumes

Has your new boyfriend given you a bottle of perfume that just really isn’t your sort of smell? Or maybe you’re wondering why your wife never wears that fragrance you buy her every Valentine’s Day?

Picking scents isn’t everyone’s thing, but the lions at Whipsnade Zoo don’t mind. They’re running low on scents for their enrichment activities, and today, the international day of love, they’re hoping to get people to donate their unwanted perfume gifts.

Keepers at the zoo want the public to donate their unwanted Valentine’s Day fragrances to the new pride of African lions, who love nothing more than discovering new smells. So don’t worry if you don’t like the smell of sandalwood, Malik and his lionesses Waka and Winta do!

Perfume-scent trails are a great way for keepers to get the lions to put their hunting instincts to good use: putting strange smells around their home or dousing hessian sacks in pungent aftershave, hiding them for the trio to find.

But the lions’ love for perfume has meant the zoo’s stocks are running low. Keeper Steve Merrick-White said: “Spraying perfume on trees, in the long grasses or even in straw-filled hessian sacks allows our young pride to test out their hunting skills and utilise their magnificent sense of smell – but we get through a lot of it!”

“We’ve all had to grin and bear being gifted perfume or aftershave for Valentine’s Day that we’re simply not a fan of. But rather than let it gather dust on your bathroom shelf, you can give it a second life and donate it to the big cats at our conservation zoo.”

Lions, like all cats, have an extra smelling organ on the roof of their mouths called the Jacobson Organ. Steve explained: “If you see a lion grimace, they’re not unhappy, they’re opening their mouths to take a large sniff of air. This allows lions to smell prey, or detect another lion, from more than five miles away - it’s what makes them king of the animal kingdom”.

Perfumes, in good condition (not leaking or broken), can be dropped off at the zoo’s admission centre.