Why is aspirin toxic to cats?
Aspirin is toxic to all cats from house cats to lions.
Aspirin is broken down in the liver using a protein called UGT1A6 by a gene with the same name. Cats hardly produce any of this protein because the cat genome has a broken, pseudogene version of this gene.
The northern elephant seal and brown hyena also have broken versions of UGT1A6.
Because cats eat mostly meat, the gene to help against plant poisons is dispensable so the broken gene has been free to spread through the population in a 'use it or lose it' way.
Cats also have low levels of amylase in their saliva, and they don't have a sweet tooth because TAS1R2, a gene involved in taste, is also a pseudogene.
Other mainly meat eaters, hypercarnivores have working copies of UGT1A6 and it is thought that cats went through a low population stage so any faulty versions of the gene were passed on. The northern elephant seal has also gone through similar constraints.
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