Since a cat’s sense of hearing and smelling is more sensitive than ours is, it’s reassuring to discover that in one respect leastways we have got superior sense organs. When it comes to the sense of taste, our tongues are somewhat more adept than theirs. However, just only slightly. Similar to us, cats are responsive to four primary tastes…sour, bitter, salt and sweet. We react to all four in a strong matter, but cats are lacking when it comes to sweet tastes. They don’t have our ‘sweet tooth’.

Until recently it was believed by many experts that cats were practically the only animal among mammals that wasn’t capable of determining sweet tastes. One stated, with no expertise, ‘The cat doesn’t display any response to sweet tastes’. Another one stated, ‘Sweet tastes can’t be recognized by the cat’. This age-old belief now needs to be put away. Recent tests have proven clearly that cats can recognize sweet tastes. If milk is watered down to one quarter of its normal strength, and a hungry cat is then offered an option between the watery milk laced with sucrose versus the same milk with no sweetener, they will without fail, choose the sweet dishes.

If this is the case, how come it has been rejected in the past? The answer lies in the fact that in almost all tests cats disregard the sweetness factor when making a choice. It’s such a small significance to them they all but ignore it. If, for instance, they’re tested with whole or even half and half milk, they express no preference for the more sweetened examples. Their reaction to the milk itself is too strong. Only if the milk factor is considerably diluted does the sweetness factor start to show up. And so, while cats do savor the taste, they do so at a really modest dismantle.

Sour taste is a cat’s foremost reaction; followed by bitter, then salt and the last one is sweet. As food touches the tongue it comes in contact with sensory papillae there. These papillae (nubs) are strong, rough and backward pointing and are located in the middle of the tongue. In this area, there’s a specialization of the tongue’s surface that doesn’t have anything to do with taste. So, there aren’t any taste buds in this central area. It’s a zone related solely with scraping meat from bones or with cleaning fur. The taste buds are limited to the tip, the sides and the back of the tongue only.

However, the most powerful reaction of all to the food is to its smell, or aroma. To a cat, when approaching a meal, this is only the really important information they are receiving . That’s how come most will sniff it and then walk off without even trying it. This is comparable to a wine connoisseur who only has to sniff the wine to recognize how good it is. A cat can learn all it wishes to know without actually sampling the food.

If the cat happens to take a mouthful, then the tongue also has a sensitive reaction to the food’s temperature. The untamed ancestors of our domestic cats chose to eat freshly killed prey (the weren’t scavengers). And the tamed descendants have maintained the same position on this issue. The ideal, preferred temperature for cat food is 86*F, which happens to be the same temperature as the cat’s tongue. Food taken directly from the refrigerator is detested by the cat, unless it’s extremely hungry, in which event it will eat virtually anything.

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