Conclusion
- All three West African chimpanzees tested in the present study were clearly able to perceive all ten sweet-tasting substances and preferred them over water.
- The chimpanzees’ taste preference thresholds were generally similar to those reported in other non-human primate species.
- Although all of the chimpanzees’ taste preference thresholds were higher than the human taste detection thresholds, in most cases they did not differ by more than one order of magnitude. As taste preference thresholds only provide a conservative approximation of an animal’s ability to detect a substance, it is possible that chimpanzees can detect concentrations even lower than the taste preference thresholds reported in the present study.
- As for humans, sensitivity to the various substances tested varied considerably.
- The categorisation of each substance’s sweetening potency as either high- or low-potency (relative to the reported sucrose taste preference threshold) for the chimpanzees matches that reported for humans. Furthermore, the ranking order of sweetening potency correlated significantly between chimpanzees and humans.
- Taken together, the results of the current study support the notion that phylogenetic relatedness correlates positively with sweet-taste perception between species.
Responsible for this page:
Director of undergraduate studies Biology
Last updated:
05/06/19