Eileen McGovern, age 14, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for her question:

Do birds have a sense of taste?

The birds, of course, are toothless. They swallow whole bites without chewing, which means they have no time to taste the flavor of their food. In any case, they have hardly any sense organs for testing flavors. Neither do they smell very well. So the birds cannot be finicky gourmets. However, their vision is excellent. In most cases, their well placed eyes reveal the scenery on all sides    in living colors.

To understand the tasting talents of the rest of the animal world, we must compare them with our own. It so happens that few if any of our animal friends have tasters as keen as ours. Those that can taste various flavors depend, as we do, on sensitive cells called taste buds. Our sense organs are goblet shaped clumps of cells situated in various parts of the mouth. These taste buds measure about 360 to an inch and the average adult has about 10,000 of them.

A rabbit has 17,000 taste buds and a cow has 25,000. However, neither of these animals can detect the fine variations of as many flavors as we can. In the bird world, the parrot seems capable of being the champion taster. But since he is limited to about 400~taste buds, it is not likely that he enjoys much flavor from his snacks and crackers. Other birds have fewer than 400 taste buds and most likely they taste little or no flavor in their foods.

Aside from the taste buds, our sense of flavor also is enhanced by a wide variety of smells. The inside of the mouth also senses qualities such a roughness, smoothness and crunchiness. A bird has nostrils on his beak, but their main purpose is to breathe in air and to some extent filter out the dust. He has hardly any sense of smell.

So, a bird is unable, or almost unable, to taste. However, the insides of his mouth may give him some sensations of soft or crunchy type snacks. In any case, the worm eating robin seems to prefer. soft meaty foods while chickens favor hard grains of cereal. Nobody seems to know how birds select the different diets that nature deems suitable for them.

Compared with the birds and with most other animals, the human sense of taste is outstanding. Experts have boiled it down to four main categories    sweet and sour, salty and bitter. However, the four main tasting talents can be blended and also enhanced by smells to give us an enormous number of different tasty sensations. Perhaps nature's plan for us is to make chewing so pleasant that every bite is thoroughly chomped before swallowing.

Experts cannot explain in detail how the taste buds work. But those that taste sugary sweet are clustered around the tip of the tongue. Clusters of taste buds that sense salty and sour flavors are along the sides of the tongue. Most of those that sense bitter flavors are on the surface of the tongue, toward the back. But chickens and robins, eagles and even talented parrots get little or none of these tasty sensations.