swine and sweet

monica

Pigs are omnivores like humans, and their physiology shares many common points with humans. Except for limited behavioral and electrophysiological studies in which pigs were exposed to known gustatory stimuli, relatively few reports have described responses to wide diversity of gustatory stimuli.

Importance of taste is indisputable in many aspects of feeding behavior, particularly for the selection of feed, which is essentially based on palatability (Glaser et al., 2001).

Many animal species display a marked preference for sweet tasting solutions, less detailed information is available on sweet taste preferences in the feed. In this respect a sweet taste is considered to be attractive for a piglet. Intensive sweeteners as a replacement for sucrose have become more and more common practice in feed. However, recent research (Glaser et al., 2000; Nofre et al., 2002) has shown that several compounds tasting sweet to man do not elicit any significant sweet responses in pigs.