Ronnie wrote: >Dogs will eat sweet stuff, but I don't see cats going after bananas and >apples and tangerines (dogs either for that matter). Well, first, a rather unscientific answer ;-) , but...well, it's a stunning mental picture: Thursday I bought a pot of honey from the local Oriental Market. The container was glass, covered with bees and honeycomb, with a snap-on plastic lid. The glass part looked like it would live out a second life as an interesting vase or such, so I took it to show my boyfriend (who was relaxing in front of the TV). Fatal error: the honey pot was forgotten on top of the coffee table. Several hours later, I stumbled across this scene: Two ferrets, covered in sugary glue, twisting over each other like a pair of serpents, and shaking their feet because they were sticking to the table. One had the phone bill stuck to it like a post-it note. There was a lake of honey on the table, tacky footprints everywhere...honey had seeped into the rest of the bills. The quantity of honey available seemed to have overwhelmed them: so they were not so much eating it as playing with it. The great insult: There was a cat sitting at the corner of the table, diligently lapping up honey footprints. Haha, and I had been regarding the cats as these "noble agents of justice", patrolmen of the livingroom, the ones who valiantly beat the ferrets out of my plants ;-) (The cats like to sleep in a large window stocked with greenery, and therefore defend their "space" with determination). Obviously the system had been corrupted ;-) Cats commonly DO appreciate sweet canteloupe, honeydew melon, peas, starchy potatoes, and such. This is a thread that has been beaten to death in the rec.pets.cats.* usenet groups ;-) For all those who believe that cats have better judgement than dogs or ferrets ;-) well: One of mine likes to lick the glue on envelopes, and the other has a great attraction to garlicy Hoisin sauce. (just like Petromalt?) Also, a dangerous *and* sweet-tasting fluid poisons many cats: radiator fluid. Yes, the "why"...that's another story. I don't have an answer to that, just a few thoughts. Plants are truly *chemical cocktails*, and the relationship between animals and the plants they eat is really intreguing...AND hideously complex ;-) One simple example with humans: a lot of times we are eating foods not because they are exactly what we want at that moment, but, instead, for the biological effect that we are expecting from them. Coffee and tea to waken, cranberry juice for bladder infections, stewed prunes that need no explaination ;-P The compounds in the plants could be considered to be labelled by their tastes...tannins are antibacterial, and have a pronounced dry fuzzy taste: you'll relate to that if you think of cracking open an underripe (tannin-loaded) banana peel with your teeth. Gack! You might recognize that same effect in (real) cranberry juice. So, it may not be impossible for an animal to relate a compound though a taste or texture to an effect. The intent to "self-medicate" may be a part of an animals food choices... certainly only a part, though. If the recent spate of commercials featuring men rhapsodising about the effects of their bran breakfast cereals may be held up as an example, you'd guess that there is some biological pleasure *aside from the taste* to be had, ha!, through some of an animal's "strange" food choices. Some plant material is anti-helminthic, i.e. de-worming... while I've never had the pleasure of having worms ;-) I'm sure that the effects of those plants or fruits, too, would be satisfying. Perhaps, altogether, domestic animals seek out not natural foods, but components of familiar tastes from those foods with positive associations (via their effects). (This is *not* fact, it is thought.) I'm only mentioning that because it seems kinda neat that some animals manage to pick out odd foods that are also incidentally beneficial to them...for some cool examples, check out the essays in _The Ecology of Arboreal Folivores_, Smithsonian Inst., 1978. (No, this is not just limited to "tree-dwelling leaf-eaters", lots of interesting asides. I remember reading of really BIG cats, lions, enjoying melons, too.) I suspect it may be a red herring to search for a "natural" or "beneficial" justification in all cases, i.e. a correlation with "natural" diet and activities and effects and so on. My boys used to adore roast bones as kits, even barking if I took away one while they were still working on it. Now, they are totally uninterested in most non-kibbleform foods, and I am left scratching my head as to why the stinkrats want to eat my soap. I personally feel that most creatures are motivated by a quest for some sort of pleasure. Yeah, the question of soap: "It's like a party in your mouth"? Well, for how many years has Cheez Wizz been on the market, huh? You can't rule out pure pleasure...and you can't rule out "impure" pleasure ;-) either: I suffer greatly here from theft of hot peppers, due to the addictions of one of my ferrets. Now, they are the first things I hunt out of the grocery bags when I come home. Once, it was only the spectacle of a ferret barking at his butt that alerted me to the existance of a half-eaten scotch bonnet under the couch ;-) Just like those weirdo hot pepper addicted humans, this little guy has his opinions...and the "flaming hoops" effect is no deterrent. (Hot pepper worshippers claim that they get a kind of "high" from the heat of these satanic vegetables. Yeah, I don't get it either ;-) but I wonder if my ferret does ;-) ) Anyhow, my opinions only. [Posted in FML issue 1911]