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In the 1600s, an Armenian merchant started poking around, looking for musk, an incredibly lucrative perfume ingredient that came from glandular secretions of Tibetan musk deer.

Deer musk is specifically a secretion produced from the scent gland of the male musk deer.

The Tsaatan live far from roads, sharing the boreal forest with endangered Siberian ibex, argali sheep, red deer and musk deer.

Because the harvesting of the substance — which comes from the gland of the endangered male musk deer — has been illegal since 1975, all commercial musk is a synthetic interpretation of the actual, animal thing.

Small and medium-size mammals that once flourished in northern Pakistan, such as the Himalayan musk deer, are threatened.