Cats Can’t Taste Sweetness

Cat owners may claim that their beloved pets love ice cream and doughnuts, but it’s the fat that cats enjoy. Felines’ taste receptors can’t detect sugar. Humans, like most other mammals, have five different receptors—salty, bitter, sour, umami (savory), and sweet. The taste receptor for sweet is encoded in two genes that code for two proteins, both of which are involved in our ability to enjoy sugary treats.

Cats lack the receptor for sweetness.  They only have 470 taste buds. Compare this to 1,700 in dogs, and 9,000 in humans. Of those limited taste receptors in feline mouths, none are programmed to taste sweetness.

Our feline friends are only interested in one thing: meat because they lack the ability to taste sweetness.  They do not possess the genetic “hardware” needed to taste sweets.

In cats, a chance mutation appears to have broken one of these genes, and this broken version persisted. That’s why tigers, lions, and your kitty will never have a sweet tooth. To her, the satiating tastes are the umami of meat and the saltiness of blood.

Cats lack an important taste receptor gene that enables the brain to recognize sweet tastes.

Taste receptors are proteins in the cells of the taste buds that enable the brain to recognize certain flavors. Researchers identified the DNA sequences and examined the structures of the 2 known genes Tas1r2 and Tas1r3 that encode the sweet taste receptor heteromer T1R2/T1R3 in other mammals. “It was determined that “cat Tas1r3 is an expressed and likely functional receptor, whereas cat Tas1r2 is an unexpressed pseudogene.”

What does this mean? Essentially, cats only seem to have one of the two known taste receptors that detect sweetness. In general, cats do not seem to be able to taste or enjoy sweet flavors. Having only one of the two sweet taste receptors may mean that cats can detect some sweetness at very high concentrations, but they are unable to fully experience it in the way humans and many other mammals do.

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