I guess by now a lot of us know that dogs are very different to cats in tasting sweet substances, usually foods. The infographic below explains the difference if you were unaware of it. The underlying cause of this difference is that the dog is an omnivore in practice while the cat is a strict carnivore and through evolution has no need to taste sweet substances. The cat recognises bitterness as potentially toxic and discards such substances as potential foods. Many people believe dogs are carnivores. In fact, dogs are omnivores, and even wolves in the wild derive nutrition from both plant and animal sources. Cats also by the way eat some plants; the domestic cat eats long succulent stems of grass and the snow leopard eats a certain shrub: Myricaria bushes and also willow twigs. I argue that for domestic cats it is the folic acid in grass which is beneficial and for snow leopards the benefit is increased oxygenation of the blood, an important aspect of their physiology as they live at high elevations.
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