The fifth taste...

[Cynth]

Well, I guess if they say it's a taste, it's a taste. There must be something weird in my genetic make-up that doesn't allow me to discern the common taste shared by parmesan cheese and grapes and broccoli for heaven's sake. It's okay. I'll get over it.

[missy]

I can't taste bitter. There's about 10% of the population that can't. When I "trained" for sensory panels at work, I couldn't tell the difference between the bitter and the water cups.

[Wanderer]

Well, I guess if they say it's a taste, it's a taste. There must be something weird in my genetic make-up that doesn't allow me to discern the common taste shared by parmesan cheese and grapes and broccoli for heaven's sake. It's okay. I'll get over it.

It's the "deliciousness" flavor...Tomatoes have it in good quanities, too...Umami is stronger in the presence of sodium, which is why tomatoes taste so much more delicious after salting.

They've discovered the specific receptors on the tongue that are activated with the umami taste, so it really is a true flavor

[Lambchop]

Uno momento . . . this stuff, the deliciousness flavor, is best exemplified by boiled dried, dead fish?

And enhanced by MSG???

Is "umami" the Japanese word for "migraine?"

[cowtime]

My mami done told me ....

djm

That's one I like to play on Joanna piano-

"Blues In The Night"

My mamma done told me,
when I was in pigtails,
My mamma done told me, Hon,
A man is a two-face
he'll give you the big eye,
And when the sweet talking's done.
A man is a two-face,
A worrisome thing who'll leave you to sing,
The blues in the night

[djm]

That's one I like to play on Joanna piano

How about this one:

My grand-mami and your grand-mami
Sittin' by the fire
My grand-mami says to your grand-mami
Gonna set your flag on fire

Talkin' 'bout

Hey now (hey now)
Hey now (hey now)
Iko-iko an dey (yeah)
Jakko mo fino, ah-nah-ney
Jakko mo fi-nah-ney

djm

[Innocent Bystander]

So they had a sex-change?

[brewerpaul]

they mentioned this on public radion today but i got to work before the story came on.

Here ya go:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=15819485

[I.D.10-t]

It would be interesting to see a list of the receptors in the tongue. I believe that the “savory” taste is covered by two types of buds. Cats, (I think) are missing buds for sweetness, and other animals have different taste buds so the five flavers are not consistent within the animal kingdom. I wonder which animal has the largest number of taste buds and if it corresponds to smell receptors. For vision, the Mantis shrimp seems to be the champion. Mantis shrimp have 12+ color receptors in their eyes compared to the 2-4 that humans have.

Rambling in the morning... where is the coffee...

[falkbeer]

It would be interesting to see a list of the receptors in the tongue. I believe that the “savory” taste is covered by two types of buds. Cats, (I think) are missing buds for sweetness, and other animals have different taste buds so the five flavers are not consistent within the animal kingdom. I wonder which animal has the largest number of taste buds and if it corresponds to smell receptors. For vision, the Mantis shrimp seems to be the champion. Mantis shrimp have 12+ color receptors in their eyes compared to the 2-4 that humans have.

Rambling in the morning... where is the coffee...

It´s logical that cats are missing receptors for sweetness since they are carnivors. It´s also interesting that humans have a better taste sence than dogs. As everybody knows, a dogs nose is infinitely better than the human nose, but not it´s tongue! I believe that there are just three types of receptors for colour (cones) in the human eye. And the colours are red, green and blue. That is if you don´t count the rods which are only sensitive to different nuances of grey. I wonder how one would percive the world if one would have the colour perception of the mantis shrimp? RGB computer screens and a standard colour TV-set wouldn´t work, that for sure. On the other hand, it´s possible these gadgets aren´t in much demand in shrimp community.

[I.D.10-t]

It would be interesting to see a list of the receptors in the tongue. I believe that the “savory” taste is covered by two types of buds. Cats, (I think) are missing buds for sweetness, and other animals have different taste buds so the five flavors are not consistent within the animal kingdom. I wonder which animal has the largest number of taste buds and if it corresponds to smell receptors. For vision, the Mantis shrimp seems to be the champion. Mantis shrimp have 12+ color receptors in their eyes compared to the 2-4 that humans have.

Rambling in the morning... where is the coffee...

It´s logical that cats are missing receptors for sweetness since they are carnivors. It´s also interesting that humans have a better taste sence than dogs. As everybody knows, a dogs nose is infinitely better than the human nose, but not it´s tongue! I believe that there are just three types of receptors for colour (cones) in the human eye. And the colours are red, green and blue. That is if you don´t count the rods which are only sensitive to different nuances of grey. I wonder how one would percive the world if one would have the colour perception of the mantis shrimp? RGB computer screens and a standard colour TV-set wouldn´t work, that for sure. On the other hand, it´s possible these gadgets aren´t in much demand in shrimp community.

It does make sense that taste buds would adapt to what kind of diet the animal has, but It is surprising that smell and taste sensitivity seem to be independent (I always thought that they were more complimentary). It does explain some of the things that I have seen a dog eat.

One thing that I find interesting is that tastes do not seem to blend in the way colors do. Mix blue and yellow together and the color appears to be green. Mix sweet and salty together, and you can still taste both if one does not over power the other. In wine testing this allows the properties of how sweet (or how dry), tart, or astringent a drink is to be ranked independently.

The number of cones and the type very in a persons eyes. Some color blind people have less than the normal three and some women may have four. Due to genetic drift, I guess that there are two types of red cone that can add an additional level of color recognition and some women may have both (tetrachromats?). One thing to note is that due to the blending of colors, some things that appear to be the same color to a person with three cones could look different to a person with only two if one of the pigments was a blend of two colors like the blue/yellow vs. green mentioned above.

So where does that leave our television watching shrimp friends? They would just be limited much like we were with the black and white televisions of the past, it would be missing the UV and infrared spectrum and just seem off. It seems that the shrimp also have depth perception, and ability to recognize polarized light. The limitation of a 2D visual has been something that people have tried to work out for quite some time. The new Beowulf movie is using the fact that it is rendered in 3D as a marketing bonus, and relies on glasses to filter out information going to the independent eyes. Considering that the shrimp has compound eyes, and that each eye has independent depth perception, I doubt that I will see one sitting nest to me at the next movie with working 3D glasses.

Rambling in the afternoon... where is the coffee...

[falkbeer]

It would be interesting to see a list of the receptors in the tongue. I believe that the “savory” taste is covered by two types of buds. Cats, (I think) are missing buds for sweetness, and other animals have different taste buds so the five flavors are not consistent within the animal kingdom. I wonder which animal has the largest number of taste buds and if it corresponds to smell receptors. For vision, the Mantis shrimp seems to be the champion. Mantis shrimp have 12+ color receptors in their eyes compared to the 2-4 that humans have.

Rambling in the morning... where is the coffee...

It´s logical that cats are missing receptors for sweetness since they are carnivors. It´s also interesting that humans have a better taste sence than dogs. As everybody knows, a dogs nose is infinitely better than the human nose, but not it´s tongue! I believe that there are just three types of receptors for colour (cones) in the human eye. And the colours are red, green and blue. That is if you don´t count the rods which are only sensitive to different nuances of grey. I wonder how one would percive the world if one would have the colour perception of the mantis shrimp? RGB computer screens and a standard colour TV-set wouldn´t work, that for sure. On the other hand, it´s possible these gadgets aren´t in much demand in the shrimp community.

It does make sense that taste buds would adapt to what kind of diet the animal has, but It is surprising that smell and taste sensitivity seem to be independent (I always thought that they were more complimentary). It does explain some of the things that I have seen a dog eat.

One thing that I find interesting is that tastes do not seem to blend in the way colors do. Mix blue and yellow together and the color appears to be green. Mix sweet and salty together, and you can still taste both if one does not over power the other. In wine testing this allows the properties of how sweet (or how dry), tart, or astringent a drink is to be ranked independently.

The number of cones and the type very in a persons eyes. Some color blind people have less than the normal three and some women may have four. Due to genetic drift, I guess that there are two types of red cone that can add an additional level of color recognition and some women may have both (tetrachromats?). One thing to note is that due to the blending of colors, some things that appear to be the same color to a person with three cones could look different to a person with only two if one of the pigments was a blend of two colors like the blue/yellow vs. green mentioned above.

So where does that leave our television watching shrimp friends? They would just be limited much like we were with the black and white televisions of the past, it would be missing the UV and infrared spectrum and just seem off. It seems that the shrimp also have depth perception, and ability to recognize polarized light. The limitation of a 2D visual has been something that people have tried to work out for quite some time. The new Beowulf movie is using the fact that it is rendered in 3D as a marketing bonus, and relies on glasses to filter out information going to the independent eyes. Considering that the shrimp has compound eyes, and that each eye has independent depth perception, I doubt that I will see one sitting nest to me at the next movie with working 3D glasses.

Rambling in the afternoon... where is the coffee...

A monochromatic screen would probably apper the same to both us and our friend Shrimpy. The form of the depicted object would be the same. But if Shrimpy was waching a TV he would probably find that he could work out the form of the object but it would be in false colours. Sometimes my VCR can produce false colours, but it´s still no problem to identify Jay Lenos chin.

One thing with our colour perception that puzzel me. Humans have (normally) three types of cones, sensible to red, green, blue. These colours are the primary colours and all other colours can be made up from just these three. This is from a scientific point of view. (and using additive synthesis). But is this how humans really percive the world? No. A rater new colour system, NCS, or the Natural Colour System adds yellow as 4th basic colour. Technically speaking yellow is a mix of red and green. If you are using the subtractiv colour system, for example in printing. There are three "compound" colours: yellow (red + green), magenta (blue+red) and cyan (blue + green). But, of these three colours only yellow stands out as a colour in its own right, the other to just looks red and blue. Why? I´ve tried to correct a frind who is a printer that magneta isn´t the same as red, but without much success.

[I.D.10-t]

One thing with our colour perception that puzzel me. Humans have (normally) three types of cones, sensible to red, green, blue. These colours are the primary colours and all other colours can be made up from just these three. This is from a scientific point of view. (and using additive synthesis). But is this how humans really percive the world? No. A rater new colour system, NCS, or the Natural Colour System adds yellow as 4th basic colour. Technically speaking yellow is a mix of red and green. If you are using the subtractiv colour system, for example in printing. There are three "compound" colours: yellow (red + green), magenta (blue+red) and cyan (blue + green). But, of these three colours only yellow stands out as a colour in its own right, the other to just looks red and blue. Why? I´ve tried to correct a frind who is a printer that magneta isn´t the same as red, but without much success.

I wonder if part of the reason of why yellow stands out is because of the layout of the color gamut. From what I have read, it seems that no three color system can fully cover all of the hues, but rather a section of the total pallet of colors.

do "primary" colors exist?

Vision and color are at the heart of painting

A bit of a hijack, hope the color commentary is not in poor taste.

[Innocent Bystander]

I have a problem with the notion that cats "don't taste sweetness". I know it's received wisdom, but it doesn't square with how my cats behave. Splodge likes milk, but prefers milk that has had my wife's cereal in it, so it's sweeter.

[djm]

But it may also have something from the cereal that thickens the milk that the cat likes. I have also read that humans have a better overall sense of taste than cats. It seems we have given up some powers of smell in order to increase powers of taste, whereas cats and dogs went the other way. Similarly, we have better colour perception than cats and dogs at the expense of motion perception and night vision.

djm