Every few years, posts go viral on social media warning consumers that this substance—called castoreum—may be disguised as “natural flavoring” on the ingredient list of your favorite sweet ...

If you're from outside of the Midwest, you may have never heard of it, but if you're in the know, you understand why blue ...

Beavers have been born in Hampshire for the first time in 400 years. Two kits were spotted in early July in an enclosure on ...

It’s a warm late summer day here in the lowlands of East Kent, and all around are signs that the season is slipping into ...

Castoreum is an anal secretion beavers use to mark their territories. It also happens to smell like vanilla. More specifically, the raw form is often described as "birch tar or Russian leather." ...

Britain's beavers were hunted to extinction 400 years ago for their lustrous fur and castoreum – a musky secretion used in perfumery until the 20th century. But in the last decade, growing ...

He picked up a “metallic,” followed by an “animalic note,” which made him think of castoreum, a milky substance that’s found in the anal gland of beavers and used in chypre perfumes.

It’s rare to find it today but the vanilla flavour in ice cream was once enhanced with Castoreum, a substance that adds notes of musk and Russian leather to make fake vanilla taste more convincing.