Taste and Tongue
Discriminating taste buds have earned cats an unfair reputation as fussy eaters. Cats aren't picky just to be difficult; they've simply evolved tastes that help them distinguish what is good for their health from what isn’t.
- Rows of small hooked projections, called papillae, cover the tip, sides and back of the tongue and throat — and each papilla can house from a few dozen to several thousand taste buds. (A dog has only about 2,000 taste buds in its entire tongue.)
- Like other carnivores, cats prefer salty, bitter and sour foods, while eschewing sweets. They have trouble digesting sugar and often end up with diarrhea when they eat it. Some domestic cats will occasionally succumb to a sweet tooth, favoring particularly chocolate (which is poisonous for them) and raisins.
- In general, though, cats prefer the fats and amino acids found in meat, though they often eat only certain parts of an animal, based on taste, or will choose a certain dry cat food by taste, if it has little aroma. When a cat does overrule its better judgment and samples something unpleasant or poisonous, it will salivate heavily to expel the offending tidbit. Domestic cats sometimes react to medicines this way.
Cat tongues are more than mere organs of taste, though. Anyone who has ever been treated to a licking knows that cats' tongues are rough. The backward-facing papillae that scratch your skin when the cat licks you are used as a built-in "comb" during grooming and to scrape meat off bones when consuming prey.
