Can kittens taste sweetness?
You may have heard about the taste of cats, they can’t taste sweet, but many people still have questions: why do cats want to eat cake or ice cream? What can they taste? Do they like sweetness? Let’s find out about their taste secrets at once!
1. Cats have 1/12 the taste buds of humans
There are about 470–480 taste buds on a cat’s tongue, which are distributed on the front, sides, and back of the tongue, while humans have about 9,000, which is equivalent to 12 times the number of cats. Is it a little proud? Think cats have a limited sense of taste? If so, you are wrong, although cats have a weaker sense of taste, they have other auxiliary organs.
2. “Tasting” food by sniffing
The olfactory cells of cats are almost 40 times that of humans. This super-superior olfactory ability has also become an auxiliary “tasting” organ for the sense of taste, so whether the food is fresh or not, you can smell it clearly. “The action doesn’t need to bother the cat to taste it.
3. Sensitivity to each flavor is different
Cats can taste the same four flavors: sour, bitter, salty, and fresh (meat umami), and they have different sensitivities to each flavor. In addition to their own taste, the temperature of the food will also be a basis for cats to judge the taste. . Their favorite food temperature is 30–38 degrees Celsius, which is close to their own temperature or that of a freshly hunted small animal.
4. Most sensitive to sour taste
As carnivores, cats are actually very sensitive to sour tastes, especially the sour taste in meat. This is a molecule that exists in meat and blood, allowing cats to easily taste whether the food is fresh or not, making cats proper “foodies”.
5. Prefer salty food
Cats are also more sensitive to salty tastes. Fresh blood with a slightly salty taste in raw meat is the favorite of many cats, but overly salty processed meat is not suitable for them. Even if they like it, the owner cannot condone it. Because the cat’s own metabolism of salt is relatively poor, excessive intake will bring a huge burden to the urinary system!
6. Avoid toxic foods with bitterness
In rejecting bitterness, cats have achieved a high agreement with their owners. They have 12 bitter taste receptors on their tongues, 7 of which are particularly sensitive, allowing cats to avoid the dangers of ingesting poisonous plants and insects (most poisonous animals and plants in nature have a bitter taste).
7. Insensitive to the sweetness
As a pure carnivores, cats themselves do not need to digest carbohydrates, so cats have degraded all their own functions of processing carbohydrates, including the taste genes for the sweetness of carbohydrates. But the sweetness of amino acids in meat can still be tasted by cats.
8. Nitrogen! Why do cats like sweets?
At this point, there must be some owners who will ask: “But my cats like to eat sweets, especially bread, cakes, ice cream, and the like.” In fact, the truth is: cats like to eat these not because they like sweetness, but because they are sensitive Smell the rich yeast, milk, eggs, and animal fats in these foods.
P.S. For this kind of carbohydrate-based food, it’s good to give cats a little bit of fun occasionally, but eating too much is harmful because cats can’t digest carbohydrates.
9. Cats can taste special flavors
In the end, cats actually have a slight advantage in that they can taste something their owners can’t: the magic compound from meat, adenosine triphosphate (ATP). As carnivorous cats, they finally have their home. Are the owners curious about what it tastes like?
