Japan’s penguins are stricken by the curse of taste

This is the curse of taste. You are delighted for many years with coffee, say. All coffee is the same. You are at McDonalds? Tremendous! At Starbucks? Sure! At a gas station? Better yet. And then one day, through no fault of your own, you are subjected to somebody’s fancy, good coffee, and you taste it and detect that it has notes of something and hints of something else. And presto, you are expelled from the garden forever! You have knowledge of good coffee and of evil coffee. Now you drink your normal coffee and it turns to ashes in your mouth.

Developing preferences is a horrible, itchy feeling. The thought that some things are better than other things and that you want those first things — abominable! A nightmare!

Well I regret to note that somebody has done this to the penguins at Hakone-en Aquarium. Someone has gone and inflicted taste on them. The penguins did not ask for this, but for years, through no fault of their own, they were eating fancy, choice aji mackerel! Fatty, flavorful! But supply chains being what they are, and costs increasing all around, the aquarium has had to find somewhere to cut back.

So now the penguins are being forced to enjoy saba. Well, not enjoy. Tolerate. Which some of them won’t! Have you seen a penguin snubbing a subpar fish? Especially given how formally attired those penguins are, it looks like what passes for the action climax of an Edwardian novel. The fish is presented. The penguin gives it the cut direct. (I realize I am mixing up my English snobbery things, but you get the idea.) It looks absolutely devastating. If I were that fish, I would simply wither up and die, although I think the fish is dead already.

I have a certain terrified awe for the penguins who won’t go along with the new plan, who are remaining firm in their refusal to eat the less expensive fish, even if it forces their aquarium into financial ruin. For these particularly particular penguins, accommodations are being made. How are you going to keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree?

They are penguins! They don’t understand money, even if they dress like a financier who has just booked passage on the Titanic. They know what they like, and that is that. So their exquisite taste in fish is forcing their poor keepers to decide between feeding them the mackerel to which they are accustomed, and keeping the aquarium from running aground. They may cut down on tank cleanings! They may turn off lights! But they must give the pickiest penguins their mackerel. What choice do they have?

Taste is a curse!