There’s a reason why your dog will scarf down a cookie while your cat turns up its nose—and it’s all in the genes, say scientists.
Why are cats such picky eaters when dogs seem willing to wolf down just about anything they encounter? It’s a question many pet parents likely ask themselves while coaxing their feline friend to swallow a pill or prying another slobbery piece of mulch from their puppy’s mouth.
Since they couldn’t just ask cats directly, researchers figured this out by analyzing their DNA. House cats, tigers, and cheetahs have a “broken” version of the gene Tas1r2, which works with another gene, Tas1r3, to enable sweetness detection. Though Tas1r3 appears to function perfectly fine in cats, Tas1r2 is an “” that’s missing 247 letters. Without them, Tas1r2 does not produce a crucial protein needed to form a receptor for sweetness on cats’ taste buds.
To take the study a step further, they gave 25 felines the choice between a bowl of plain water and one that’d been spiked with molecules that provide umami flavor. As expected, the cats strongly preferred the umami water, and more specifically, water containing umami compounds present in. That may help explain why felines love the saltwater fish so much.
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