maybe it's just they like the taste? it's not like we don't go out of our own way to find some delicacies just because we are in the mood for them.
I know anthropomorphizing animals is a no-no these days, but trying to explain everything based on "nutritional value" seems a bit narrow minded...
Well, I think you are making a good point here, so I wouldn't write it off on that basis. In the rush to avoid anthropomorphizing animals, people sometimes go to the opposite extreme and assume that things like "taste" are uniquely, exclusively human experiences and can't be extended to animals.
That seems to attribute full ownership of a category of experience to humans, and to me that kind of assumption is more problematic, if we're talking about the excesses of anthropocentrism. I think your explanation makes perfect sense.
'Why do you keep having sex? You already have all the kids you want!'
Do dolphins get high on octopus?
Although I just learned from Wikipedia that apparently we figured out how to raise non-poisonous pufferfish. Neat.
Perhaps it's only worth eating for the thrill?
I have a Japanese friend who explained the fugu thing to me (at least, the way he saw it). Every once in awhile a group of people die when they eat fugu that's not prepared properly. So when you go out with your colleagues you try to work the latest such incident into the conversation, and then you order fugu. The goal is to eat it with the supreme nonchalance while trying to make your coworkers visibly nervous.
> The goal is to eat it with the supreme nonchalance while trying to make your coworkers visibly nervous.
We eat raw pork mixed with raw eggs and raw onions on a bun in Germany. But nobody there thinks it's particularly dangerous. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett)
On the other hand, many people eat octopus, some even eat it alive. If eating octopus would produce the slightest drug effect, I think that we, humans, will know it :-)
And yes, of course there is a lot of bibliography available about dolphin behaviour.
"Pufferfish produce a potent defensive chemical, which they eject when threatened. In small enough doses, however, the toxin seems to induce "a trance-like state" in dolphins that come into contact with it"
It makes sense that earlier ancestors who maybe found bitter very enjoyable and sweetness not so enjoyable died off from a lack of calories or eating poisonous things before reproducing. And it makes sense that while across cultures people eat very different foods, you see the same patterns in terms of umami and sweet being considered desirable and bitterness often rejected.
In fact the human tongue is considerably more complex than traditionally assumed. For example, besides the umami taste receptors recently proven to exist there are also studies looking to see if we have taste receptors for "fat", "starch" and even "metallic" flavors, among other things.
The chemical reaction between molecules and how the brain decodes the signals produced by them is fascinating when it comes to the flavor of things.
I am not really aware of any mammal behaviour that I cannot somewhat relate to at gut level. You may say I anthropomorphize, or you may say I equate, it doesn't really matter. There isn't a physiological or neurologic feature we don't share, me and all those other mammals. I have some language and some reasoning power to top it all off with, but our sensations, reactions, emotionals, motivators, fears, pains and joys are clearly of very similar nature. Of course they are - they run on the same basic hardware architecture.
And now, if you will excuse me, my dog wants to go for a walk. I know exactly what he means.
[Edit: typo]
If you want to find where our perceptions differ from that of a cat or a dog or an elephant, I believe that anything cultural or learned in nature is a better place to start. If every human experiences it, it's likely that other mammals experience it too on some level.
I suspect that if our experiences shared few or no similarities, humans would've had far less success in the way of keeping, training, and befriending animals. The ability to accurately empathize with other creatures has to have jump-started the process in many cases.
[1] See a review about it that explains his findings. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/05/how-ani...