Hi, my name is Steve.
I'm a professional zookeeper.
What's your favorite food?
My favorite food is burritos.
I love burritos.
Have you ever wondered if birds have a favorite food?
Let's find out by exploring the topic of bird taste.
Sensitivity
We think that birds don't taste the way we do.
For example, parrots have 350 taste buds on their tongues.
Humans have.... over 9,000!
It's over 9,000!
So we're pretty sure there's a big difference in how taste works for birds.
On the other hand, not all of a bird's taste buds are on its tongue.
Some are found all over the mouth.
Ducks have taste buds on their beak tip.
Emus have taste buds in their throat, which seems less useful.
The emu swallows something, then tastes to see if it should have swallowed it.
Nice job, emus.
We define taste as occurring in five categories: sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami.
A quick aside if you haven't heard of umami before, this is the savory taste of smoked
fish and broth, and it hasn't been known by the general populace for that long, so no worries.
Just imagine sitting down on a chilly night with a warm bowl of saltwater to eat and how
gross that would be, then replace the bowl of saltwater with a bowl of broth.
Now you know what umami is.
ANYWAY, birds are "behaviorally insensitive" with most of those flavors.
We'll get to what "behaviorally insensitive" means in a minute, but it basically means
we think they can't taste the flavor.
European Starlings can taste salt, sugar, bitter, and sour , but not umami.
Penguins can only taste salty and sour.
Many birds don't react to the presence of sugars, so we think they don't taste sweet.
Hummingbirds, on the other hand, react very differently to different sugar concentrations.
They abandon flowers with low sugar concentrations, and they defend a flower that has high sugar
concentrations.
See the video about hummingbirds to learn more about hummingbirds' obsession with food.
Here's a question: why would a bird not need the ability to taste sugar?
The answer lies in their diet.
Fruit-eating birds like parrots react to sweetness, but chickens do not.
Chickens' normal diet is grains, grasses, and bugs.
Not things that have a lot of sugar.
So if a chicken can't taste sugar it's no big deal.
They have lost their ability to taste sweet.
Probably.
Let's talk about the reason we're not sure.
Measurement When scientists test to see what flavors a
bird can taste, they can look at its tongue to see what kind of taste buds there are.
Different taste buds have different shapes.
They can also put two dishes of food in front of the bird.
Let's say they're checking whether the bird can taste sugar.
So one food dish has feed with sugar, and the other is plain feed.
If the bird eats more from the sugary dish, they assume the bird can taste sugar.
ALSO, if the bird eats less from the sugary dish, they assume the bird can taste sugar
but might not prefer it.
Only if the bird eats equally from both dishes do they assume the bird cannot taste sugar.
But think about it- do we know for sure at this point that the bird can't taste sugar?
What if the bird just doesn't care which food it eats, even though it knows which one is
sweeter.
So scientists say that the bird is "behaviorally insensitive" to sugar.
That means that by watching the bird you would never know if it could taste the chemical
or not - it shows no preference for or against the chemical.
I take care of lots of birds, and I assure you that many have strong preferences for
one food over another.
For example, a bird might take a grape, but not a blueberry.
But is it taste?
Or is it color, texture, or shape?
As we've learned, it's a little more complicated than it sounds.
Thanks for taking the time to learn some sweet facts about birds.
This channel has many other videos to suit your taste, so check out this menu of options.
Thanks for stopping by.