I used to think my kitten was after the sweetness when i noticed that she only likes/prefers milk based sweets. But then she does have same affinity for chocolates and strawberries too.
Reminder: Chocolate can be lethal for cats...
Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)
71–80 of 167 posts
Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
My taste buds are different, all canteloupe tastes slightly rotten to me, even when other people swear up and down it's fresh, but it tastes like it's rotten to me. Other melons are fine for me. I am not a super taster so it's just an idiosyncracy.
Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)
#73About cats only eating meat: I have 3 cats, and all of them love any blades of grass, eating a full 'salad' every day.
As obligate carnivores they don't only eat meat; they have to eat meat.
Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)
#74Fun 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?
Bread isn't particularly sweet compared to other foods. Orange juice has a strange and very strong flavor compared to other juices and has a significant bitter component to its taste due to crushing the peels.
Never tried chocolate after brushing my teeth but I don't find 99% / unsweetened dark chocolate particularly offensive.
Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)
#75About cats only eating meat: I have 3 cats, and all of them love any blades of grass, eating a full 'salad' every day.
Do you grow cat grass for them? Ours loves it. https://www.hillspet.com/cat-care/nutrition-feeding/cat-gras...
Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)
#76Earlier 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.
What it indicates, rather, is that at the time of divergence from other Carnivora there was a lack of evolutionary pressure for conserving the taste of sweetness.
An example in primates is the loss of Vitamin C synthesis, which would have been a handy adaptation during the Age of Sail, but the gene was lost at a time when our common ancestor at a fruit-heavy diet.
Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)
#77Some 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…
Ah beef tallow, hadn’t thought of that. Good suggestion.
The best theory I had was that he was getting a buzz from solvent in the ink or the plastic itself.
Or that he was just odd.
Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many of the things that we eat that have “sweet” as part of the flavor profile also have fats as part of ingredients - those are things that cats do taste and recognize. When one looks at cat treats, the fat component is higher than non-treat cat food.
There's no fat in the jam or preserves that my cat likes.
I strongly suspect that many cats develop an enjoyment of certain textures. Mine is completely uninterested in most greens, but delights in chewing on broccoli.
Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)
#79Fun 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.
Are you sure it only dulls the sweet receptors? Coffee (with no sugar or milk) tastes sweet when I brush my teeth. I always thought it was the sour and the sweet getting confused rather than the sweet going bye-bye.
Re: Cats Cannot Taste Sweets (2007)
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've always been suspicious of that. Why is it specifically OJ that tastes awful, and not other juices, or chocolate, or bread?
Wild guess: the acid amplifies whatever effect in some way.
So I thought so, but I've tried grapefruit juice, and I don't get the effect. And I can clearly taste sugar after toothpaste