by Matthew Cobb
Some rather cute geckos have breakfast. Now why would a gecko eat a Cheerio? Can it even taste sweet?
The receptors that are involved in tasting sweet things are encoded by a gene called T1R2, which is not present in cats or in a number of other mammals, such as bats and horses. (This has featured on WEIT a number of times, including here.)
A 2011 paper in PLoS ONE (open access) describes smell and taste genes in a wide variety of animals, and above all links to this chemoreceptor database hosted at the University of Toronto, which shows that the taste receptor is a functional gene in the Anolis lizard. My guess is that it will be functional in this gecko, too!
Go and mooch around on the database – it’s easy to access, and the accompanying paper will help you identify which kind of receptor induces which kind of sensory experience. If you don’t want to do that – just look at the geckos!
[EDIT I have just watched the post with the sound on – the twee soundtrack might not be to everyone’s taste (ha!)]
Its post-gustatory ablutions are artless, and somewhat reminiscent of the feline manner.
As a keeper of an African Day Gecko species (Lygodactylus williamsi) and having researched many others (including the Phelsuma genus as the one pictured is, I assume a P. madagascariensis) it’s quite common to offer sweet fruits, nectar as well as pollen and live foods.
I know nothing of the science of taste but they do lavish the sweet fruits for some reason, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the liked the ‘taste’ of a cheerio. Of course, they will also just lick anything to try it, so it could just be a fortunate shot.
Still, a beautiful picture day geckos are my favourite gecko species.
Small fruits and flower nectar are important parts of these day-geckos’s natural diets. They’re important pollinators for some plants.
The wife thinks it’s great when I buy her flowers, well I say buy ‘her’ flowers haha.
This is probably a silly question but – if the gene for tasting sweet things isn’t present in horses or cats, then why do horses (reputedly) like sugar lumps, and why did one of our cats love gingernut biscuits?
Indeed. One of the life’s great mysteries. In other words, we don’t know.
That’s quite – refreshing. That there’s a quite simple question we don’t know the answer to. (Yet).
(I’m also slightly relieved I didn’t ask one of those questions that ‘everyone’ (but me) knows the answer to).
Perhaps they like they smell.
Is it that they can’t taste sweet, or that they don’t do it using the same chemistry as we do?
I find it hard to believe that a horse can’t taste sweet, they sure have a hankering for it.
My thoughts exactly!
It should be pretty easy to come up with an experiment that tests a horse’s taste preference. For example, make a couple loaves of bread, one simple flour, water, and yeast; the other, the same but with as much sugar as doesn’t significantly change the texture. See which the horse prefers. If it shows a preference, then it’s time to start looking for the mechanism….
(You might think of offering ripe or unripe fruit, but there could easily be other cues than sweetness that a horse triggers on. The sugar isn’t going to change much other than the taste of the bread.)
b&
Semi-off topic, but that “twee soundtrack” is actually Malaysian musician Zee Avi. Her stuff is definitely worth looking up if you like sweet, intelligent singer-songwriter stuff.
We had a cat once that loved to steal nougat chocolate. Good thing cats don’t have the same problem as dogs.
But why? And what can have been the attraction for the stupid cat? (Seriously, she wasn’t quite right in the head.)
Geckos love rice, oats, and wheat as well – maybe cheerios still have some trace of starches in that matrix of sugar and air? Will geckos eat pure puffed sugar?
Reblogged this on Funniest Animals.
(Regular, original) Cheerios aren’t a sweet cereal. I think they have a gram or 2 of sugar per serving.