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Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)

scientificamerican.com

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Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)

#51

Post by MereInterest »

MisterTea wrote: post #42
mattkevan wrote: post #31

Some of the stuff I've seen our cat eating, it's both obvious and a blessing that he doesn't have much of a sense of taste. Goes nuts for the plastic wrappers you get around Pepsi cans and won't stop licking them. Little weirdo.

I have a cat who loves to lick crinkly plastic wrappers and bags. I use shopping bags for my bedroom trash can and I'll wake up to him just sitting there licking the folded over edge for upwards of 10 minutes. Two theories I've heard are that beef tallow is sometimes used in the manufacture of such bags so they might be smelling that. Or it could be as simple as they enjoy the sensation and/or sound of licking the ba…

Huh, one of our cats does the same. We don't want her to choke on plastic, so we no longer leave any plastic bags out in the open. She also tries to lick olive oil and butter, so the beef tallow theory would follow the same pattern of looking for fat.

Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)

#52

Post by arethuza »

leftyted wrote: post #50
arethuza wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My cat will lick the inside of mugs that contained black coffee - I know caffeine isn't good for cats so I don't encourage this behaviour but he definitely seems to enjoy the taste (I don't take sugar so its not sweetness he is after).

To me, dried coffee residue from black coffee smells absolutely delicious, sweet, almost pastry-like.

Well, I can confirm that it tastes quite nice as well - thought fortunately I am working at home today so nobody saw me conduct that particular experiment!

Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)

#55

Post by pitzips »

mattkevan wrote: post #31

Some of the stuff I've seen our cat eating, it's both obvious and a blessing that he doesn't have much of a sense of taste. Goes nuts for the plastic wrappers you get around Pepsi cans and won't stop licking them. Little weirdo.

I hear ya! Mine is obsessed with eating cobwebs.

Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)

#56

Post by danaris »

foobiekr wrote: post #30
JoelMcCracken wrote: post #2

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.

I realize that raisins are not safe for cats and did not feed them to my cat deliberately. 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.

Mine gained the nickname "Cupcake" (alongside his variety of other nicknames) when he licked the frosting off a cinnamon-spice cupcake that was out on the counter for a party we were hosting once.

He also licked the powdered sugar off half a box of linzer cookies another time.

The frosting, I can definitely see being for the fat...the powdered sugar, I'm baffled by.

Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)

#57

Post by authoritarian »

DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #20
lightedman wrote: post #8

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.

I would not describe grapefruit or melons as “sweet” at all.

Grapefruit I can see, but what kinds of melons are there that aren't sweet? The most common melons I can think of (watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew) are all quite sweet. Through googling I found some other melons that appear to mostly be from asia, although I've never seen them in person, and there descriptions mention sweetness as well. Do you have examples of savory melons?

Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)

#58

Post by andrewla »

I found this out when asking myself the question "are animals fooled by artificial sweeteners". The rabbit hole that that led into is not only do we not know the answer to that question, many animals don't even taste "sweetness" (or if they taste it they don't like it or don't prefer it). Not even all primates, if I recall correctly.

And we've seen drift -- apparently we used to be able to bait cockroaches with sweet bait (through the middle of the century), but they have adapted to it and it no longer works as bait.

Taste and smell are very strange and defy attempts at reductionism; our brains are basically very evolved olfactory organs. Dealing with smells was so hard that brains evolved to deal with the problem, and then it was just evolution asking the question "what else can we do with this giant block of computational power -- what about ... memory? vision? hearing?"

Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)

#59

Post by ceejayoz »

goatinaboat wrote: post #38

There is a reason cats prefer meaty wet food to dry kibble, and disdain sugar entirely This person has never met a cat. One of ours is obsessed with sweet foods like yoghurt, honey, pastries. Which we don’t generally let her have because of her teeth.

You're discounting several possibilities.

Yogurt has protein, and many varieties have a lot of fat. Pastries tend to be fatty (butter/lard). Honey's less obvious, but my cat would lick clean wooden spoons just for the texture; perhaps yours likes something about the stickiness?

Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)

#60

Post by namdnay »

cmiller1 wrote: post #53

Fun fact: the sodium lauryl sulfate in toothpaste dulls the sweetness receptors on your tongue. The taste of orange juice after brushing your teeth is what it would ALWAYS taste like to cats.

I've always been suspicious of that. Why is it specifically OJ that tastes awful, and not other juices, or chocolate, or bread?
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