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00:0040 foot under the sea in the Bahamas, we're here to do a taste test.
00:17How does the human sense of taste compare to other animals?
00:26What will one of the world's most voracious carnivores make of something we love to eat?
00:44This is my friend Jeremiah Sullivan and we're doing a little experiment.
00:51Sharks have a reputation for being the garbage cans of the sea, but how do they measure up
01:01to us?
01:02Hold out a bit of fish and there you go, a fish head swallowed straight down, just what
01:12you'd expect.
01:14But now we're going to give them something they don't normally come across, a chicken.
01:24What will they make of one of our favourite tastes?
01:29Look, one's taken the chicken, but there, he spat it out.
01:35In fact, most species of shark are actually picky eaters.
01:42They'll turn down a perfectly edible piece of meat, so don't even bother offering them
01:47fruit and veg.
01:49When it comes to eating anything and everything, the human sense of taste wins hands down.
02:00Sharks aren't the ultimate garbage cans, we are.
02:12Tonight, it's our fabulous sense of taste.
02:25I'm Nigel Marvin.
02:26As a zoologist, I've met animals with some pretty bizarre tastes, but not as strange
02:32as ours.
02:33We eat virtually anything.
02:37I'll be discovering how we push our taste buds to the absolute limit, but manage to
02:42stop just short of poisoning ourselves.
02:49And I'm going to tuck into what, from a biological point of view, is the strangest food of all,
02:55something that will blow my head off.
03:00Some of the things we eat are truly bizarre.
03:04Meet the Stilton lovers.
03:06Terry, Martha, Nigel and Catherine.
03:09There's all sweat dripping off this.
03:11You can literally see the mould growing through it.
03:14But you're all fans of Stilton.
03:16Yes, absolutely.
03:18It's the king of cheeses, isn't it?
03:20Now meet the paydan lovers.
03:22Victor, Fun, Richard and Ying.
03:25In the West, we call these thousand-year-old eggs.
03:28In fact, it's an egg that's been buried in ash, tea, lime and salt for about 100 days.
03:34And you adore these, all of you.
03:43But tasting these foods for the first time can be a very different story.
03:48Let's do an experiment and turn the tables on them.
03:52Those eggs, they were buried for 100 days or so.
03:55This cheese takes 200 days to mature, kept in a cellar.
03:59This is the best English Stilton.
04:02You're not looking impressed.
04:06So, it looks like a fossil, but you love rich foods.
04:10This is a raw and fermented egg.
04:17Off you go, then.
04:25Mmm.
04:51If I took another bite of that, I would absolutely throw up.
04:54It tastes like something gone off.
04:56Like something rotting?
04:58Yes.
05:00As far as I can tell, the nicest bit of this is the plate.
05:02Disgusting?
05:04Absolutely.
05:06We all have a remarkable ability to acquire a taste for things,
05:10even if we hate them at first.
05:13And that adventurous sense of taste gives us humans an amazing advantage.
05:25Just imagine if we simply didn't take to new tastes.
05:29What if we were like the pickiest animal on the planet?
05:34Smells nice, Bob.
05:36Yeah, it sure does. Just cut it a few minutes ago.
05:42I've come here to San Diego Zoo to meet an animal
05:46that has a taste for just one kind of food.
05:55And, Val, we're in a giant fridge here,
05:59full of gum leaves, and eucalyptus is the only food these animals eat.
06:04They only eat eucalyptus, only certain species of eucalyptus,
06:07only certain leaves on the ends of the branches, and it has to be fresh.
06:11And there's around 500 kinds of eucalyptus.
06:13Probably a little over 500 species of eucalyptus.
06:15They will eat about three dozen out of those.
06:18For breakfast, it's eucalyptus.
06:20For lunch, it's eucalyptus.
06:22For dinner, it's eucalyptus again.
06:24To us, it's an incredibly boring diet,
06:27but it suits the koala just fine.
06:31Koala, it's an old Aboriginal word, and it means no drink.
06:35They don't even have to leave the trees to get water.
06:38They get 90% of their moisture from the gum leaves that they eat.
06:44The koalas get the eucalyptus trees to themselves
06:47because few other animals can digest the leaves,
06:50but they pay a high price for refusing to eat anything else.
06:54They must rely on big stands of eucalyptus trees of just the right kind.
06:59If they're cut down, these guys have nothing at all to eat.
07:04The koala is now threatened with extinction,
07:07all because it refuses to try new tastes.
07:11It couldn't be more different to us.
07:15We're one of the world's greatest omnivores.
07:18We can survive across the globe,
07:20because wherever we go, we can always find something we like to eat.
07:40Here in Mexico City, there's a restaurant
07:43where if it flies, crawls, slithers, or walks,
07:46it's on the menu.
07:50I'll have those.
07:57That looks interesting.
08:02Sauteed grasshoppers, flash-fried caterpillars,
08:05and boiled cacti.
08:07It's all on offer.
08:12There's representatives from all of the kingdoms here,
08:15the plant, the animal kingdom, even the fungal kingdom.
08:18I love reptiles and amphibians, and this is frogs.
08:22Frogs with green sauce and rice.
08:25I'm a little sad about...
08:27Well, a little sad, but really flavourful.
08:30Eddie, for the life of me, I can't work out what that is.
08:34Well, that's iguana.
08:38Whether we're vegetarians or meat-eaters,
08:40there's one thing about our sense of taste that we all have in common.
08:45We're willing to try new things we've never tasted before.
08:49The biggest number of species in the animal kingdom are the insects.
08:52What are these called?
08:54I've got to eat one of these things, and I think this could be it.
08:57Try it. Don't leave Mexico without it.
08:59So here goes.
09:10I've never eaten a caterpillar before, but they're quite tasty.
09:15We'll try just about anything,
09:17but we rely on our sense of taste to tell us what we should actually swallow.
09:22What's that?
09:25Youngsters reject quite a lot of food.
09:31They tend to turn down anything remotely bitter.
09:34We start off disliking bitter tastes
09:37because our sense of taste is trying to steer us clear of danger.
09:41In nature, poisonous plants often taste bitter,
09:45so that's why children are reluctant to eat their greens.
09:53And sour tastes aren't very popular either.
09:56A sour taste could mean something has gone off or is dangerously unripe,
10:01so few children like sour-tasting citrus fruits.
10:12But we adore the tastes that give us what we need.
10:16We like salt because we need it to replace salt lost through sweat.
10:26And above all, we love sweet foods because sugar means energy.
10:33But if you think children have a sweet tooth,
10:36their craving for sugar is nothing compared to some animals,
10:40like the hummingbird.
10:45Sherry, I've got a sweet tooth. I love chocolate.
10:48But you're an expert on other creatures that are the ultimate sugar eaters.
10:52Oh, yes, indeed. Just because hummingbirds don't have teeth
10:55doesn't stop them from having a sugar craving.
10:57They're among the most sugar-hungry creatures on Earth.
10:59And you feed them around here. What do you feed them on?
11:01Sugar water. We replace the natural nectar that they get from flowers
11:05with a very similar solution of sugars and water.
11:08You fill that to the top? Yes.
11:10Let's fill that up and you take a swig of that and you tell me
11:13whether that satisfies your sweet tooth or not.
11:20Wow.
11:29So just how much do hummers love their sugar?
11:32Will they go for anything that looks vaguely like their feeding station?
11:56Hummingbirds are passionate about sugar water
11:59because they get most of the energy they need to survive from sugars.
12:03A hummingbird can have up to 50% of its body weight in sugar every single day.
12:09And even though I've got a sweet tooth, I couldn't do that.
12:13It would be like us humans eating 1,000 bars of chocolate.
12:19At the other extreme, there are animals with absolutely no interest in sweet things.
12:30Cats just eat meat.
12:32They get almost all of their energy from the fat and protein,
12:36so their tongues don't even register sweet tastes.
12:40So like all animals, the tastes we crave are determined by what we need.
12:45In our case, sweet and salty foods.
12:48But sour and bitter things might be poisonous.
12:52So, we need to tell these different tastes apart almost instantly.
12:56And we're equipped with tongues that can do just that.
13:05Our saliva dissolves morsels of food,
13:08releasing chemicals which travel down to the taste buds,
13:12which are buried under the skin of the tongue.
13:15Our saliva dissolves morsels of food,
13:18releasing chemicals which travel down to the taste buds,
13:21which are buried in the surface of the tongue.
13:36When bitter or sweet chemicals land on the surface of taste-sensing cells,
13:40a bitter or a sweet signal is sent to the brain.
13:46Salty and sour chemicals are even smaller.
13:53They pass right through the walls of the taste-sensing cells.
13:57Once inside, they trigger a salty or a sour signal to the brain.
14:05But if we just relied on our tongues for detecting flavours,
14:09we wouldn't go after the extraordinary range of foods that we do.
14:13If all we got was sweet, bitter, sour and salty,
14:16our taste world would be pretty dull indeed.
14:20It turns out that a lot of what we think of as taste
14:23actually has nothing to do with our tongue.
14:27Professor Linda Bartashuk has a clever trick
14:30to show how much of a food's flavour is actually picked up by the nose.
14:35Let me show you.
14:36I have something here and I don't want to tell you what it is.
14:39Close your eyes so you don't see what it is.
14:41And hold your nose.
14:42I'm going to put something in your mouth.
14:45OK, ready.
14:46And here it is.
14:50Now, close your mouth.
14:51And what you want to do is tell me what you perceive.
14:55Just a little bit of a...
14:57I can't taste it at all, but a burning sensation on my tongue.
15:00OK.
15:01That's all I can get.
15:02Now, when you let go your nose, you can tell me what it is.
15:06Let go your nose.
15:07OK.
15:08Oh, wow, cinnamon.
15:10Exactly.
15:12Without their noses, even these bright young students
15:15can't recognise one of the most common spices in the world.
15:20It's hot.
15:23But somewhat like flour.
15:25Chalky and sort of powdery.
15:29Some kind of powder.
15:30Oh, it's chalky and hot.
15:33It doesn't taste like anything.
15:36It doesn't taste like anything.
15:40Cinnamon.
15:43Wow, that's cinnamon.
15:46Oh, cinnamon.
15:49Oh, it's cinnamon.
15:55Oh, that's pretty good.
16:00We all use our tongue and nose together to taste food.
16:03But even so, the same food can taste very different to different people.
16:09That's because some of us have ultra-sensitive tongues.
16:13So how sensitive is mine?
16:16If I'm going to push my taste buds to the absolute limit,
16:19I need to find out what I'm made of.
16:24We all live in different taste worlds.
16:27And we're going to find out a little bit about the taste world you live in
16:30by painting your tongue with this blue food colouring.
16:35With this dye, the structures that hold the taste buds
16:38will stand out as pale dots against the dark background.
16:45The more dots, the more sensitive to taste.
16:48The most sensitive are called super-tasters.
16:51And they can have 100 times more taste buds than other people.
17:00So am I a super-taster?
17:02Okay, I can look at your tongue.
17:05You're a super-taster.
17:08And let me ask you some questions about what you like.
17:11Do you like alcohol?
17:13Do you like bitter vegetables?
17:15Well, we know a little bit about why that is.
17:17You don't like alcohol because it's both bitter and burns your tongue
17:21more than it would that of a non-taster.
17:23And you don't like bitter vegetables
17:25because super-tasters are particularly responsive to bitter.
17:31About one in four people are super-tasters like me.
17:34With our sensitive tongues, we tend to be much pickier about what we eat
17:39because things do genuinely taste different to us.
17:44So look at how differently a non-taster and then a super-taster
17:48react to a bitter chemical.
17:50So each of us has a built-in limit to how strong-tasting we like our food.
18:03As we grow up, we learn to become more and more adventurous, but it takes time.
18:34As we try things, we gradually discover that even though some foods taste bitter or sour,
18:40they're not actually poisonous.
18:48Gradually, we start to acquire a taste for all sorts of things that we once found disgusting.
18:58It's an astonishing transformation.
19:00We don't just tolerate things that we hated as children,
19:03we end up really, really loving them.
19:08As adults, we override our childhood reaction that bitter and sour are bad.
19:13It means that we can relish virtually anything.
19:16But for each of us, there's one ultimate limit.
19:31I couldn't eat this for a million pounds. It's perfectly fine.
19:35But when I was at university, I had a dodgy kebab, and that put me off these for life.
19:45Thinking rationally, this is perfectly okay.
19:49But because of my student kebab experience, even getting this close makes me feel a little sick.
19:55Our reaction to foods that make us ill is a basic biological defence mechanism,
20:00and the effects can be extremely powerful.
20:09This footage of wolves eating a dead sheep was filmed in the 1980s by a team of American scientists.
20:16It's part of a startling experiment to test how the effects of food on our immune system
20:22It's part of a startling experiment to test how sheep can be protected from attacks by wolves.
20:32The scientists put a pill containing a mild poison into a piece of mutton wrapped in sheep hide.
20:41Within half an hour of eating the bait, the wolves start to vomit.
20:52Several days later, and a sheep is put into the pen with the wolves.
20:56After just one nip at the sheep, the wolves back off.
21:11For several months, these predators will now be turned off one of their favourite meals.
21:17It made them sick before, and they don't want to make the same mistake again.
21:22Just like the wolves, when we eat a strong tasting food, and then we're sick within a few hours, something remarkable happens.
21:29Just like the wolves, when we eat a strong tasting food, and then we're sick within a few hours, something remarkable happens.
21:38The sight and the smell of the plate is enough to make me feel really very sick.
21:43I actually feel quite uncomfortable and not particularly secure, sort of the prospect of being close up to it.
21:52A taste can be completely transformed, so a food we once liked now triggers deep feelings of disgust.
22:00I just cannot touch it, it disgusts me, it makes me feel absolutely sick just thinking about it.
22:08My brother, sister and I were presented with a plate of lentils each, and that was all we were getting.
22:13I wanted to try some authentic crispy Chinese duck.
22:17We'd drunk quite a lot of different drinks, as young men do, and finally I got ordered a half pint of this stuff.
22:23I had a couple of forkfuls, and then I was allowed to leave the table to be sick.
22:28That night I had the most horrendous case of food poisoning.
22:31And after a couple of sips, I felt really nauseous, I had to make a swift exit for the outside.
22:39Our brain fuses the memory of the food and being sick, so even getting close to it is now hard work.
22:47We're really adventurous with our sense of taste, but when we do come across something poisonous, we're programmed to steer clear of it.
22:57My stomach is churning, and I'm quite pleased that I haven't had much to eat today, so far.
23:03It's really, it's really horrible.
23:08Our sense of taste has evolved to guide us to what we need, wherever we go.
23:13It lets us enjoy a fabulous range of foods, limited only by the sensitivities we're born with, and the occasional dish that poisons us.
23:23It takes us right to the edge of what's safe to eat.
23:29It takes us right to the edge of what's safe to eat.
23:34And there's one food above all others that shows just how far we're willing to push those limits.
23:43I've come to a chilli eating contest in the American Midwest to find out just how much my taste buds can take.
23:52In the audience is Professor Paul Rosin, who's spent years studying why we keep coming back for the burn.
24:00Alright, we're getting ready for the second match.
24:04The champion's going down today, though.
24:06Who's the champion?
24:07He's a record holder, right there.
24:09And what did he have?
24:10What's your record?
24:1119?
24:12I think I did 19.
24:13He's going down today.
24:15You're going down to an Englishman.
24:17An Englishman's going to take you down!
24:21From London, England, Nigel Marvin!
24:40You must eat everything in your mouth.
24:42How many have you eaten before?
24:4422.
24:4522 is your record.
24:49You're going down, baby!
24:52Woo!
24:54Nigel, it's a pleasure to hear you here from England.
24:56Thank you very much.
24:57How does an Englishman end up in a jalapeno eating contest in Wisconsin?
25:04I have no idea, but I'm really scared.
25:09Alright, you guys ready?
25:10Listo, present, go, empezamos!
25:13Go!
25:18The burn of the chilli starts to kick in the moment I take a bite.
25:22A chemical called capsaicin fires off the pain receptors in my tongue.
25:28So my tongue feels like it's on fire and my body thinks it's suddenly way too hot.
25:34It's panic stations.
25:37In an effort to cool down, blood flow to the skin suddenly increases,
25:42turning me red from my neck to the top of my head.
25:46My eyes go bloodshot and I start to drip with sweat
25:50as my poor body desperately tries to deal with the burning hot chilli.
25:55And despite all that...