Bamboo-Munching Pandas Also Have a Sweet Tooth

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Bamboo-Munching Pandas Also Have a Sweet Tooth
LiveScience.com
By Tanya Lewis, Staff Writer 8 hours ago



Mei Xiang, female giant panda, Smithsonian's National Zoological Park.



Bamboo isn't the only food pandas crave — the furry giants also have a sweet tooth, a new study finds.

Studies of panda behavior and genetics suggest that pandas not only have taste receptors for sweet foods, but also show a strong preference for natural sweeteners such as fructose and sucrose.

"Pandas love sugar, "study leader Danielle Reed, a behavioral geneticist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, said in a statement. "Our results can explain why Bao Bao, the 6-month-old giant-panda cub at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., is apparently relishing sweet potato as a first food during weaning."

Giant pandas feed almost exclusively on bamboo, a plant that contains very little sugar and doesn't taste sweet to humans. Pandas belong to the same order as cats, which have lost the ability to taste sweet foods because of a genetic mutation that turns off sweet-taste receptors.

Reed and her team wondered if pandas, like their distant relatives cats, had also lost this ability.

To find out, the team studied eight 3- to 22-year-old giant pandas at the Shaanxi Wild Animal Rescue and Research Center in China for six months. They gave the animals two bowls of liquid: one that contained water, and one that contained water with one of six natural sugars (fructose, galactose, glucose, lactose, maltose and sucrose), at a low or a high concentration.

The pandas clearly preferred the sugar water to regular water, especially the fructose and sucrose solutions. "The animals avidly consumed a full liter of these sugary solutions within the respective five-minute test periods," according to the researchers.

The researchers also tested whether the pandas preferred the diet version — water flavored with artificial sweeteners — but the bears didn't seem as keen on it, suggesting they may not be able to taste these sweeteners, or at least not very well, the researchers said.

Meanwhile, scientists confirmed that pandas do, in fact, have sweet-taste receptors. They isolated genes for these receptors from DNA collected from pandas during routine health exams and inserted the genes into human host cells grown in a lab. The cells showed a strong response to sugars, but not to most artificial sweeteners.

"This is the first study to address taste perception in the giant panda as it relates to feeding behavior," study researcher Peihua Jiang, a molecular biologist at Monell, said in a statement. The researchers also hope to test whether pandas can taste bitter flavors.

"The results could have significant implications for the conservation of this endangered species as their natural habitats continue to be demolished," Jiang said.

The research, which is part of a long-term project to understand how taste-receptor genes influence food preferences and diet, was detailed today (March 26) in the journal PLOS ONE.

http://news.yahoo.com/bamboo-munchin...121932605.html

[pchang]

That goes along with their "meat" tooth.

[Kidlicious]

Bet they sure get tired of bamboo then.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

New study exposes panda sweet tooth
AFP
By Naomi Seck 22 hours ago



Panda Mei Xiang inside her glass enclosure at the Smithsonian's National Zoo in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2014 (AFP Photo/Paul J. Richards)



Washington (AFP) - In a blind taste test, eight out of eight pandas agree -- sugar is delicious.

In a new study, scientists put the panda taste receptors to the test, wondering whether the cuddly critters would even notice the difference between plain water and the sweet stuff.

"Generally speaking, animals that eat plants have a sweet taste receptor because that enables them to detect sugars that are in plants that are sources of calories," explained Gary Beauchamp, director of the Monell Center that carried out the research.

But unlike most herbivores, pandas stick to one plant -- bamboo -- which is notoriously low on sugar.

So the researchers wondered whether -- like many carnivorous animals, including cats -- pandas had lost their ability to detect sweetness.

Since carnivores "don’t eat plants, don't contact sugars, there's no longer a pressure for them to maintain the sweet receptor functional," Beauchamp told AFP.



Giant Panda cub Bao Bao, picutred January 6, 2014 inside his glass enclosure at the National Zoo in Washington, DC (AFP Photo/Paul J. Richards)


The theory was that bamboo-munching pandas, who also don't seem to be exposed to much sugar, might also have lost their ability to taste sweet things.

But it turned out pandas, like other herbivores, still have a fine-tuned sweet tooth.

When given two bowls of liquid, one sweetened and one not, the eight pandas universally slurped down the sugary brew.

The researchers tested a variety of sugars, including fructose, glucose, sucrose, lactose, maltose, and galactose. In all cases, the sweet drink was preferred, and especially the ones with fructose and sucrose, which humans perceive as the sweetest.

The scientists also used cellular analysis to isolate sweet receptor cells from pandas and were able to show they responded to sugars.

They speculate pandas may hold on to working sweet receptor cells because, beyond the taste factor, they may be used in places like the pancreas and the gut to help with plant digestion.

But if pandas love sweets, why do they only eat bamboo?

In captivity, pandas do enjoy sweet foods -- including Washington's newest panda cub Bao Bao, who "is apparently relishing sweet potato as a first food during weaning," said Danielle Reed, one of the authors of the paper published in the journal PLOS ONE on Wednesday.

But pandas also need lots of bamboo, or they get sick. One hypothesis is that the reedy plant provides something necessary, so evolutionary pressure has led them to rely solely on the plant.

Another possibility being tested, Beauchamp said, is that for pandas, bamboo actually tastes like candy.

After all, there is definite evidence different animals experience foods differently -- like artificial sweeteners, which, for pandas and many other animals, don't taste sweet.

http://news.yahoo.com/study-exposes-...003726453.html

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Bamboo-munching giant panda also has a sweet tooth
Reuters
By Will Dunham March 27, 2014 5:19 PM



Giant Panda mother Bai Yun snacks on bamboo at the San Diego Zoo in San Diego, California in this January 10, 2013 file photo. REUTERS/Mike Blake/Files



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Giant pandas eat plenty of veggies, but apparently they like dessert, too.

Scientists studying the endangered black-and-white bears said on Thursday that while pandas almost exclusively eat bamboo, which contains only tiny amounts of sugars, they showed a strong preference for natural sweeteners in an experiment.

The researchers also examined panda DNA and found a match to the same "sweet receptor" gene that humans possess that underpins their ability to taste sugars.

Sweeter foods like fruit may have been part of the natural diet of pandas before human activities helped drive the animals into their current mountainous habitat where those foods are scarce, the researchers said.

"Giant pandas love sweets," said behavioral geneticist author Danielle Reed of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, who led the study published in the journal PLOS ONE.



Giant pandas Tian Tian (L) and Mei Xiang snack on bamboo at the Washington National Zoo in this January 16, 2002 file photo. REUTERS/Hyungwon Kang/Files


"We are a bit surprised. However, given the anecdotal evidence that they like apples, sweet potato and so on in captivity, we are not completely surprised," added Monell molecular biologist Peihua Jiang, another of the researchers.

Pandas, the rarest species of bear, reside primarily in bamboo forests high in the mountains of western China. Understanding what type of food pandas prefer may help determine what nutrients can be used to supplement bamboo in their diet as part of efforts to conserve them, Jiang said.

The study was conducted as part of long-term research aimed at understanding how taste preferences and diet selection are affected by taste receptor genes.

The researchers wondered if pandas were able to taste sweet stuff because while pandas are plant eaters, their ancestors were meat-eaters. Many strict carnivores have lost their sweet-tasting receptor gene, called Tas1r2, and show no preferences for sweet-tasting compounds.

For instance, their previous research showed that any type of cat, from house cats to tigers, cannot taste sweets and, thus, do not like them.

Their experiments involved eight giant pandas at the Shaanxi Wild Animal Rescue and Research Center in China. The youngest was 3 years old and the oldest was 22.

The bears were given two bowls of liquid and permitted to drink for five minutes. One was filled with plain water. The other contained water mixed with one of six natural sugars: fructose, galactose, glucose, lactose, maltose and sucrose.

The pandas liked all the sugar solutions better than plain water, especially fructose and sucrose. "They often emptied the bowl containing sugary solution," Jiang said.

The researchers then did the same tests with five artificial sweeteners, but the pandas were far less interested in those.

Pandas previously lived in lowland areas, but human activities like agriculture, forest destruction and development exiled them to their current mountain terrain.

"We cannot travel back in time to understand what animals ate before their habitats were disturbed by mankind. But we can look at their DNA and their taste preferences and make inferences about their ancient diet," Reed said.

"Giant pandas' ancient diet may have included more foods than just bamboo - perhaps fruits, hence the sweet tooth. It may be that bamboo is an every-day food for giant pandas, but when sweeter foods are available they go for them," Reed added.

http://news.yahoo.com/bamboo-munchin...211938840.html

...

I have no idea why the mainstream science news outlets find this story so interesting, but I am impressed with how tough it is to get a rise out of you guys.

[AAAAAAAAH!]

I'm amazed a carnivore would evolve to subsist on bamboo.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Species families switch dietary modes not infrequently over long time scales; the largest mammalian land predator ever was related to goats. Look it up. Dietary flexibility is a competitive advantage during times of climactic crisis - which has happened a number of times in Earth's history, or we'd have scales.

[Sava]

i heard that like you can have your taste buds stimulatinged by ekexctricyt and make it taste salty or sweet or whatever

i wish they made that

cuz then i could taste stuff

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

[-Jrabbit]

I actually find this story quite fascinating.

Now, Asher in contact to request that GIF in 3, 2...

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

He knows how to save it, surely. I already posted an avatar-scale version in the smilies thread.

[-Jrabbit]

Ah. Haven't been there lately.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Yer missin' some fine, fine animated comedy.

[-Jrabbit]

I'm told my avatar has been retouched...