Scientists from the Monell Chemical Senses Center, in collaboration with scientists from the Waltham Centre for Pet Nutrition, UK, report that a defect in a gene that codes for part of the mammalian sweet taste receptor can account for cats’ indifference to sugar and other sweets. Cat owners have long recognized that, unlike most mammals, domestic cats are uniformly uninterested in sweet-tasting foods. According to an early study conducted at Monell in the 1970s, the same indifference to sweets is also evident in wild cats such as lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars.
