New perspectives on taste and primate evolution: The dichotomy in gustatory coding for perception of beneficent versus noxious substances as supported by correlations among human thresholds

Abstract

In various environments where primates are presently observed, as well as in forests and savannas which have been inhabited by australopithecines and early hominids, there are (or there have been presumably) categories of substances eliciting taste signals associated with stereotyped responses. Such is the case for various soluble sugars of fruits and nectars, attracting consumers, and for several plant compounds in which bitter or strongly astringent properties have a repulsive effect. The occurrence of such classes of tasty substances among natural products appears to be related to the evolutionary trends that shaped primate sensory perception (for detecting either beneficent or potentially noxious substances) in the context of a long history of coevolution between animals and plants. Here, we present original psychophysical data on humans (412 individuals aged 17–59 years) as an analogy with which to test recent evidence from electrophysiology in nonhuman primates (Hellekant et al. [1997] J. Neurophysiol. 77:978–993; Danilova et al. [1998] Ann. N.Y. Acad. Sci. 855:160–164) that taste fibers can be grouped into clusters of “best‐responding fibers” with two more specific clusters, one for sugars and one for quinine and tannins. The collinearity found between human taste responses (recognition thresholds) for fructose and sucrose, as well as for quinine and tannins, is presented and discussed as another evidence of the two‐direction evolutionary trend determining taste sensitivity. Salt perception appears to be totally independent of these trends. Accordingly, the appreciation of a salty taste seems to be a recent culturally learned response, and not a primary taste perception. The very existence of primary tastes is discussed in the context of evolutionary trends, past and present. Am J Phys Anthropol 117:342–348, 2002.