What is your cat's favorite food? Most of the shovelers' cats love to eat chicken breast, canned fish and beef and other meat, and some shovelers may say triumphantly: "My cat follows me and likes to eat sweets!" "But you know what? The cat can't taste the sweetness at all!
01
The taste organs of cats
The cat's tongue usually plays the role of hair grooming when it appears. This time, I finally have to shoulder my own work and shine as a taste organ! In fact, the filamentous nipples that cats usually use to comb their hair can no longer feel the taste. The taste buds are distributed on the puffy nipples next to the tongue, and the number is only 1/12 of that of humans.
The fact that the furry nipples/taste buds are on the side of the cat's tongue once led scientists to think that cats have a very limited sense of taste. But later after research confirmed, cats will use the sense of smell to supplement the sense of taste, and the sensitivity score of the cat's nose, up to 14 times that of people, not only that, above the cat's mouth, there is also an olfactory supplement organ - the plow nose organ, which can further help the cat to receive odor and supplement the sense of taste.
02
Why can't cats taste sweet?
The cat's inability to taste sweetness is mainly due to the deletion of genetic fragments that form sweet taste receptors in the cat's body, resulting in the cat being insensitive to sweetness or even not tasting sweetness. And because the gene fragments of the sweet receptors are missing, the cat cannot digest high-sugar foods, so the cat eats too much sweet food will lead to fat accumulation, causing kidney failure and other diseases.
03
So why do some cats prefer sweets?
There have also been studies on this kind of field scientists, and studies have found that cats may respond to high concentrations of sugar, but now they can't prove it 100% of the time, so they have to wait for more powerful proof.
In addition, cats who like to eat sweets may only like its taste and chewiness, or be interested in other flavors in sweets, such as bitter and salty, or there may be amino acids in some smells in sweets, which is one of the reasons why cats are attracted to sweets. However, it is a carnivore, so do not let the cat eat so much sweets, most of their energy supplements come from meat, if the cat eats too much sugar, it will lead to indigestion of the cat, which will cause burden and harm to the kidneys.
Therefore, cats can occasionally eat a small amount of sweets, but they must not be fed as a staple food!
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