One of the most well known of the peculiar pet facts is that cats can’t taste sweet. While this may be just a barstool anecdote, there is now new information that explains exactly why our feline companions lost their taste for dessert.

Over thousands of years, the feline race, and other carnivorous hunters subsisted of protein rich diets that did not need carbohydrates. Eventually, Darwin took over and all cravings for sweet were lost. To put it simply, it made more biological sense to seek out protein, and those that were able to live off that source thrived and became the dominant and sole perpetuators of the species.

A lot of our readers will reject these claims and mention their pet’s love of sweets as a means to write off these findings.  Well, biologist Gary Beauchamp, director of the Monell Center has an answer to these speculations: “When we first published the data on cats, it got a tremendous amount of publicity and a lot of people saying, “My cat likes sweets and you’re wrong,'” said Beauchamp, “But invariably they liked ice cream or cake, and sweetness was confounded with fat and other things.”

So, there you have it. When your cat yearns for candy or other sweets, what they are really looking for is the fat and other chemicals found in the treats you are offering them.

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