Cats Don't like Sweet Flavor

Cats (Felis silvestris catus), are carnivore. A word "cat" is usually assumed as tamed cat, but in fact, it can also referred to "big cat" like lions, tigers, or leopards. Cats have been living together with human since 6.000 years before century. This can be seen from the fossil of cats in Cyprus Island. The ancient Egypt from 3.500 years before century had used cats to chase away rats or other rodents from their barns where yields were stored.

Nowadays, cats are one of the most popular pet in the world. Cats with registered lineage and legally noted as pure breed cats like Persian, Siamese, Manx, and Sphinx are usually bred in official animal care department. The amount of pure breed cats are only 1% from the whole kind of cats in the world, the rest of them are crossbred cats like wild cats or home cats.

Cats and their families (lion, tiger, leopard) have difference if compared to other mammals. They don't like sweet flavor, and it is considered that they don't have an ability to recognize sweet flavor whereas this ability is used by mammals to detect calories of a food.

Maybe cats like to eat ice cream, but not the sweetness that attracts them because genetically cats can't taste sweet flavor. According to American and British scientists, home and wild cats -including big cats like tigers and cheetahs- have different gene of sweet flavor receptor.

It is true that sometimes cats like to eat sweet foods, but they will refuse to eat food that only contains sweet flavor without any other ingredients like butter or jelly.

"The only explanation about this thing is that cats can't detect sweetener compounds like sugar or other sweeteners because their sweet flavor receptors don't work," said Xia Li, a genetic molecular expert from Cornell University, New York, who leads the research.

According to Li, mammals taste sweet flavor by using receptors, which are like molecular gates, and scientifically known as T1R on the tip of their taste buds. T1R has two sub units, T1R2 and T1R3. Each of them is controlled by separated genes.

In the writing in Journal Public Library of Science Genetic online edition, Li explained that she had found T1R2 gene encoding changes in home cats, tigers, and cheetahs which had caused them unable to taste sweet flavor. "Beside their inability to taste sweet flavor, their other senses are normal," said Li.

This is only happened to cats, other kinds of carnivore like bears, dogs, raccoons, etc still like sweet flavor.