Taste preferences in house musk shrews for amino acids as well as NaCl, sucrose, quinine hydrochloride, HCl and saccharin Na were studied by employing the two-bottle preference technique. Shrews showed a preference for 0.2--05. M sucrose but a moderate rejection to NaCl and a strong rejection to quinine, HCl and saccharin. They exhibited a marked preference for many naturally occurring L-alpha-amino acids with aliphatic side chains at both 0.02 and 0.2 M. Increase in the aliphatic side chain length of DL-alpha-amino acids resulted in both lowering of the preference threshold and increase in the preference magnitude. Amino acids with side chains containing sulfur atoms, basic groups and Phe at 0.02 M were preferred to water, but Cys and Arg at 0.2 M was rejected. Shrews showed neither preference nor rejection to Trp, Asn, Gln and monosodium glutamate at 0.02 M, but rejected strongly Asp and Glu. D-Met from 0.001 to 0.1 M was preferred as well as L-Met, while D-Phe was more preferred than L-Phe. Such preferences for a wide variety of amino acids in shrews could be attributed to their food habit of predating on various kinds of insects and worms.