Daniel Defoe made an ill-fated attempt to farm these animals for their secretions, which infused cotton wipes during their Guinea trade. For 10 points each:
[10m] What viverrids (“vye-VER-rids”) are nicknamed “toddy cats” in Sri Lanka due to their taste for palm sap? SARS originated from these animals, whose feces is scoured for kopi luwak coffee berries in Indonesia and East Timor.
ANSWER: civets (“SIV-its”) [accept palm civets; accept specific species like masked palm civets; accept musang; accept civet coffee; prompt on carnivores or carnivorans or feliforms; reject “felines” or “mongooses” or “genets”]
[10e] African civets (“SIV-its”) became a byword for perfume since the civetone-rich oil of their perineal glands provides notes of this scent class, which also names Arctic “oxen.”
ANSWER: musk [or word forms of musky; accept musk oxen or O. moschatus] (Musk oxen are not true oxen; similarly, musk deer are not true deer.)
[10h] Al-Jāḥiẓ’s (“JAH-hizz’s”) Abbasid debate between civet and deer musk spurned this resinous Asian heartwood, which is infected with parasitic mold. A princely state with the same name bordered India’s “perfume capital,” Kannauj (“KUN-nodge”).
ANSWER: oudh (“ow’d”) [or ‘ūd; accept Oudh State, Awadh State, Oudh Subah, or Awadh Subah; accept agarwood, aloeswood, eaglewood, lign-aloe, calambac, gharuwood, Gyrinops, Aquilaria, aguila, garo, alud, gaharu, karas, kỳ nam, trầm hương, or xylaloes] (The debate, whose other contenders are saffron and ambergris, is discussed in Anya H. Hiking’s Scent from the Garden of Paradise: Musk and the Medieval Islamic World.)
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