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Why are cats picky about eating?
New York: Ever wondered why your kitten is such a picky and fussy eater? This is because cat’s taste receptors respond in a unique way to bitter compounds compared with human receptors.
All cats, from pets to wild tigers, are carnivores that consume little plant material. Domestic cats, however, may still encounter bitter flavours in food and medicines.
“We confront the challenge of ‘finicky cats’ every day. It is exciting to find an unexpected receptor response to bitter compounds that has never been described in the literature to date for any other species,” said study co-author Nancy Rawson from AFB International, a US-based pet food flavour company.
The findings will help formulate appealing food for cats as well as enhancing the acceptability of their medications.
The teams at AFB International and biotechnology company Integral Molecular studied the behaviour of two different cat bitter taste receptors in cell-based experiments.
TAS2R38 is a bitter taste receptor in humans of which some people have “supertaster” variants that give them an extreme sensitivity to bitter compounds, explaining some people’s strong aversions to broccoli and brussels sprouts.
Compared with the human TAS2R38 receptor, the cat version was tenfold less sensitive to a key bitter compound PTC and did not respond at all to another bitter compound PROP.
The cat receptor also differed from the human taste receptor by being insensitive to saccharin, an artificial sweetener that tends to have a bitter aftertaste in humans.
“We were surprised to see that one of the cat taste receptors responded to a more limited range of bitter compounds compared to humans, suggesting that cats may be detecting a narrower, or at least a different, repertoire of bitter-tasting compounds,” said co-author Joseph Rucker from Integral Molecular.
These insights could be instrumental in formulating appetising food for household cats as well as designing masking agents to enhance the acceptability of medications.
The research was published in the open access journal BMC Neuroscience.
International online casino Casino Days has published a report sharing their internal data on what types and brands of devices are used to play on the platform by users from the South Asian region.
Such aggregate data analyses allow the operator to optimise their website for the brands and models of devices people are actually using.
The insights gained through the research also help Casino Days tailor their services based on the better understanding of their clients and their needs.
Desktops and Tablets Lose the Battle vs Mobile
The primary data samples analysed by Casino Days reveal that mobile connections dominate the market in South Asia and are responsible for a whopping 96.6% of gaming sessions, while computers and tablets have negligible shares of 2.9% and 0.5% respectively.
The authors of the study point out that historically, playing online casino was exclusively done on computers, and attribute thе major shift to mobile that has unfolded over time to the wide spread of cheaper smartphones and mobile data plans in South Asia.
“Some of the reasons behind this massive difference in device type are affordability, technical advantages, as well as cheaper and more obtainable internet plans for mobiles than those for computers,” the researchers comment.
Xiaomi and Vivo Outperform Samsung, Apple Way Down in Rankings
Chinese brands Xiaomi and Vivo were used by 21.9% and 20.79% of Casino Days players from South Asia respectively, and together with the positioned in third place with a 18.1% share South Korean brand Samsung dominate the market among real money gamers in the region.
Cupertino, California-based Apple is way down in seventh with a user share of just 2.29%, overshadowed by Chinese brands Realme (11.43%), OPPO (11.23%), and OnePlus (4.07%).
Huawei is at the very bottom of the chart with a tiny share just below the single percent mark, trailing behind mobile devices by Motorola, Google, and Infinix.
The data on actual phone usage provided by Casino Days, even though limited to the gaming parts of the population of South Asia, paints a different picture from global statistics on smartphone shipments by vendors.
Apple and Samsung have been sharing the worldwide lead for over a decade, while current regional leader Xiaomi secured their third position globally just a couple of years ago.
Striking Android Dominance among South Asian Real Money Gaming Communities
The shifted market share patterns of the world’s top smartphone brands in South Asia observed by the Casino Days research paper reveal a striking dominance of Android devices at the expense of iOS-powered phones.
On the global level, Android enjoys a comfortable lead with a sizable 68.79% share which grows to nearly 79% when we look at the whole continent of Asia. The data on South Asian real money gaming communities suggests that Android’s dominance grows even higher and is north of the 90% mark.
Among the major factors behind these figures, the authors of the study point to the relative affordability of and greater availability of Android devices in the region, especially when manufactured locally in countries like India and Vietnam.
“And, with influencers and tech reviews putting emphasis on Android devices, the choice of mobile phone brand and OS becomes easy; Android has a much wider range of products and caters to the Asian online casino market in ways that Apple can’t due to technical limitations,” the researchers add.
The far better integration achieved by Google Pay compared to its counterpart Apple Pay has also played a crucial role in shaping the existing smartphone market trends.
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