What makes the sense of taste different from our other senses? How do various animals experience taste differently from humans?
In Ed Yong’s fascinating book An Immense World, we discover surprising facts about the sense of taste in animals. From bees tasting with their feet to catfish having taste buds all over their bodies, the animal kingdom’s relationship with taste is far more diverse than most people realize.
Keep reading to explore the remarkable ways different creatures experience flavors and how their taste abilities help them survive.
The Sense of Taste in Animals
Taste is a much simpler sense than smell, writes Yong. Whereas there are an immeasurable number of scents and scent combinations, humans and many animals can experience only five categories of taste—salty, sweet, bitter, sour, and umami (savory). In addition, the primary purpose of taste is to tell us whether or not to eat something, whereas the purposes of scent are many and complex. Many of the subtleties of flavor that we experience as “taste” actually come from our sense of smell.
Yong discusses the sense of taste in animals, explaining that, although humans and many animals taste with their tongues, many animals taste with other body parts. Tiny animals can walk on their food, so they often can taste with their feet. Examples of these types of animals include bees and mosquitoes.
(Shortform note: Although the main purpose of taste is to tell us whether or not something is safe to eat, research shows that animals, like humans, may also derive pleasure from foods that taste good to them. Both animals and humans have internal systems that regulate their food intake and tell them when they’re full so they don’t overeat (or, in the case of bears or lions, for example, they overeat only when necessary for their survival). One difference between animals and humans when it comes to taste, however, is that humans consume ultra-processed foods—industrially produced foods such as packaged snacks and fast foods. As Chris van Tulleken points out in Ultra-Processed People, ultra-processed foods taste so good and are so easy to eat that they hijack our internal regulatory systems and cause us to overeat.)
Yong says that animals have different types of taste buds depending on what they usually eat. Many animals that eat meat have taste buds that are very receptive to amino acids—the building blocks of protein—but hardly sensitive to sugars at all. Examples of these types of animals include catfish (which have taste buds all over their body) and cats. Animals such as koalas and pandas that eat lots of leaves have extra detectors for bitter tastes to warn them which plants are toxic.
(Shortform note: Just because certain animals don’t have taste buds that are receptive to sugar doesn’t mean they aren’t interested in sugary foods. For example, some cats like to eat sweet food items because they’re attracted to strong smells, such as the peppermint smell of a candy cane. Cats may also be interested in certain sweet foods, such as whipped cream or pancakes, because of their fat or protein content.)
