I'll Tell You How Your Balls Taste

I'll Tell You How Your Balls Taste

Wait, that may have been a poorly worded way to get my point across. You see, this is a bit strange news in the field of science, but your balls, apparently have taste receptors.

Taste receptors — the proteins responsible for our ability to taste salty, sweet, and bitter foods — aren't just present on our tongues.  Recently researchers are finding them present all over the body, from the mouth to the anus. Literally.

Taste receptors have been found in in the stomach, intestines, pancreas, lungs, and brain, the researchers said. But, we really don't know what they are there for, study researcher Bedrich Mosinger, of the Monell Chemical Senses Center told Business Insider in an email:  Read more:

[The] function of taste receptors and signaling proteins outside of taste system is still unclear... [in some areas] they seem to be part of the chemical sensing of sugars or amino acids. For the most part, though, full function of these extra-orally located taste receptors is unknown.

Only those taste receptors lack the ability to detect flavors of sweet and umami. So unlike our mouth, the taste receptors on your balls can't detect anything sour. Which does beg the question, why the fuck is there taste receptors on your balls?!

Well. Not just balls, but on various parts of your body that otherwise can't be linked up to register that with your mind and all that. And since you know that I won't leave you with blue balls on this great mystery, there is some light that has been shined on this great mystery of mysteries.

So researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center were attempting to develop mice without sweet and umami receptors for a taste-related study, but they found that the mice lacking those receptors were unable to reproduce. And after conducting further studies, they found that removing these receptors from the testes, and even just blocking their functions, rendered the mice infertile.


It goes to show you that if you have no taste, nature doesn't want you to multiple. Ah, survival of the most selective. Which I guess goes into understanding the reaction for scientist to better understand the interaction of certain drugs with human fertility. It could also lead to the development of a male birth control pill if you could find out how to hack into those shut off switches that not having those taste receptors causes.