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This leaves me with more questions as I have a cat that absolutely will not leave you alone if you're holding ANY fruit. She will cry and whine and do all she can to get to that fruit. Apple, plum, orange, grapefruit, pineapple, melons, it doesn't matter. She goes especially nuts for dragonfruit.
Knowing this, when my cats desire something sweet that I was eating, I have always assumed they wanted something else they tasted in the food -- if ice cream, then the cream, etc.
Mine loves cantaloupe. I’m curious which part of that she likes other than the sweetness.
When I read the article, I wondered what they could like in marshmallows, but looking it up I bet its this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshmallow#Protein
Evolutionarily, this makes sense. All felids are obligate carnivores that rely on meat for nutrients—for example, they need taurine for vision, which they can't synthesize and is only found in meat. So there's an evolutionary advantage for cats to not want to eat anything else.
> there's an evolutionary advantage for cats to not want to eat anything else Do we have evidence cats’ ancestors had such a receptor? If not, it might be simpler to assume there wasn’t evolutionary pressure to not taste sweetness as much as there was a lack of any pressure to taste it.
I'm not a biologist, but the lack of that gene is very conserved across all Felidae, I think (i.e. there isn't a single felid that can taste sweetness) which usually indicates that there's some evolutionary pressure.
Knowing this, when my cats desire something sweet that I was eating, I have always assumed they wanted something else they tasted in the food -- if ice cream, then the cream, etc.
When one looks at cat treats, the fat component is higher than non-treat cat food.
This leaves me with more questions as I have a cat that absolutely will not leave you alone if you're holding ANY fruit. She will cry and whine and do all she can to get to that fruit. Apple, plum, orange, grapefruit, pineapple, melons, it doesn't matter. She goes especially nuts for dragonfruit.
When I was younger, we had a cat would get into literally any food available. Fruit, cheese, Doritos, salad.
Though, people are weird, too.
Evolutionarily, this makes sense. All felids are obligate carnivores that rely on meat for nutrients—for example, they need taurine for vision, which they can't synthesize and is only found in meat. So there's an evolutionary advantage for cats to not want to eat anything else.
> there's an evolutionary advantage for cats to not want to eat anything else Do we have evidence cats’ ancestors had such a receptor? If not, it might be simpler to assume there wasn’t evolutionary pressure to not taste sweetness as much as there was a lack of any pressure to taste it.
They say that all mammals studied so far, including ones close to cats, have the gene except cats... This seems to almost demonstrate that cats must have lost that gene at some point.
Knowing this, when my cats desire something sweet that I was eating, I have always assumed they wanted something else they tasted in the food -- if ice cream, then the cream, etc.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> there's an evolutionary advantage for cats to not want to eat anything else Do we have evidence cats’ ancestors had such a receptor? If not, it might be simpler to assume there wasn’t evolutionary pressure to not taste sweetness as much as there was a lack of any pressure to taste it.
Hyenas and mongooses are feliforms and can taste sweetness, as can all caniforms (I think). Presumably that means that the carnivoran ancestor could as well. I'm not a biologist, but the lack of that gene is very conserved across all Felidae, I think (i.e. there isn't a single felid that can taste sweetness) which usually indicates that there's some evolutionary pressure.
Knowing this, when my cats desire something sweet that I was eating, I have always assumed they wanted something else they tasted in the food -- if ice cream, then the cream, etc.
That said, I had a cat that was absolutely obsessed with eating raisins to the point where we simply couldn’t have them around. To this day I cannot understand what was going on if sweetness was not a factor.
Same cat ate the tops off an entire box of glazed donuts once as well while we were out.