How do wild animals know that pet food (like kibble) is edible if it doesn’t at all resemble what they would eat in nature?
In: Biology
Creatures don’t store a list of edible material in their brains or some such, because brains are really, really bad at those things. Instead, evolution understood this problem and gave everyone the tools to figure these things out on the fly. This is what your senses are for. This is why you can even taste in the first place (presumably). It’s no accident that a lot of poisonous stuff tastes awful, or why rotten stuff smells like hell. This is how we generally tell whether something can be eaten. If it doesn’t smell or taste like death and destruction, chances are it’s safe to eat.
That’s more true in nature than it is in our modern world, but that’s us messing with evolution, for animals this rule is generally pretty safe. I’m sure there is a visual component in there as well, but if it smells nice and tastes nice, perhaps it doesn’t need to look nice. There are probably other reasons and mechanisms that help us determine what is and isn’t safe to eat, but I’d wager this is the main one.
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