Does Jaws have taste buds? He did eat a helicopter…
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Many animals taste bitter—they secrete toxic chemicals to avoid getting eaten. But bitterness may not protect against sharks. These early predators evolved WAY BEFORE the first bony fish with bitter taste receptors.
Enter Maik Behrens and a team from the Technical University of Munich.
They compared genetics between current sharks and bony fish—millions of evolutionary years apart!
Yet in both? An ALMOST IDENTICAL bitter taste receptor.
Inserted into cells, these receptors responded to ELEVEN out of ninety-five bitter chemical compounds, some bitter even to us humans!
So shark’s inherited bitter receptors have survived almost FIVE-HUNDRED MILLION YEARS of evolution!
But I say we’re still going to need a bigger boat.
Reference: Behrens, M., Lang T., Korsching, S.I., A singular shark bitter taste receptor provides insights into the evolution of bitter taste perception. PNAS 120, e2310347120 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2310347120