ANIMAL’S TASTE.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XXVII, Issue 4514, 11 April 1913, Page 4 (Supplement)

ANIMAL’S TASTE.

Many experiments have been ‘ made, in order to find out what and where the organ of taste is in tho lower creation, but it is easier to say whore is is not. Crayfish and worms scorn to have very decided preferences in tho matter of food, though no special taste organ has yet been found. Lobysters like decaying food. The crab is more dainty in its diet.

Snails and slugs show a decided preference for certain kinds of food, as garden lovers know to their cost. Reas and cabbages, dahlias and sunflowers aro groat favourites; but they will not touch the white mustard. Some prefer animal food, especially if rather high. Spiders have only a slight sense of taste; flies soaked in paraffin seem quite palatable to them; though one species, the diaderaa, is somewhat more particular, and refuses to touch alcohol in any form" whatever. The proboscis of the fly and the tongues of hoes and ants are furnished with numerous delicate hairs set in minute pits. These aro perhaps connected with the organ of taste; but, though tho exact locality of this sense in insects is uncertain, we know that groups of colls in tho tongues of animals,' called- taste bulbs, form in part tbo ends of the organ of tho higher animals. They arc very close and exceedingly numerous in man, while the tongue of even tho cow has some 35,000 taste bulbs.

It would bo interesting to know whether each special taste excites aspecial group of nerves, and that only—thus corresponding to the auditory nerves. These taste bulbs were discovered iu 1867. Each ono consists of two kinds of cells —one set forming an outer protective covering, through an opening in which project from five to ten of tho true taste colls. Though important, they are not apparently an essential part of tho organ, for birds and reptiles have none; hut neither hay,a they a keen senso of taste—except, perhaps,' tho parrot.