We are all well aware of the five senses of the human. These are one the major blessings of God. With the loss of any of these senses, we are disabled. But how these sense organs work and how we are able to understand the sense of taste, smell, touch, hearing, and sight.
There is a lot more than the main functions of these sense organs. These sense organs play a vital role in our life that we can actually say these are blessings indeed. In this article, we will discuss briefly the structure and function of the sense organs and some interesting facts about them, so read the article till the end.
The Sense Of Taste
There are thousands of taste buds, present in a tongue and are grouped in papillae which are small buttons throughout your tongue. The taste bus is a neuronal body and it looks like a microscopic cluster of banana.
When we eat, the food molecules mix with saliva and find their way on the surface of these neural bodies. These neurons then send signals to the brain which enables us to understand the taste of the food.
The basic flavors of tongue:
- Bitter: At the end of the tongue.
- Sour: mostly at the end of the tongue.
- Salty: mostly on the front sides of the tongue.
- Sweet: At the tip of the tongue.
Interesting facts about tongue and taste buds:
- The average size of the tongue is an adult is 3 inches.
- The average adult has total taste buds around three thousand to four thousand.
- You cannot see your taste buds. They are not visible by a human eye. Those white and pink bumps on your tongue are papillae.
- Taste buds are also present on other areas besides tongue, they are also present on your throat, on epiglottis, and nose etc.
- You don’t sense different tastes in different areas of the tongue.
- Your tongue is not the strongest muscle in your body.
- As you get fat, you tongue also can get fat.
- As the finger print of each individual is unique, similarly your tongue has a unique print.
The Sense Of Smell
Smell almost works like the taste but in the matter of air passing through a specialized membrane. This membrane is equal into a coin and is present in the upper part of the nasal cavity.
With the help of this, we sense different smells such as floral, mentholated, musky, acre, Alcanforado, Ethereal, and putrid etc. A human can detect acetic acid or the smell of vinegar in a concentration of 500,000,000,000 molecules per liter of air.
Some interesting facts about smell:
- Humans can detect about one trillion different smells.
- After 30 to 60 days the scent cells are renewed.
- You can also smell fear and disgust through your sweat.
- It is the oldest sense which was also present in uni-cellular organisms.
- Women possess a better sense of smell than men.
- Decreased sense of smell is an indication of serious diseases such as Alzheimer and Parkinson’s disease.
- Each human has its own distinct smell or odor.
- Unable to identify the smell may predict the death after five years.
The Sense Of Touch
Our skin has three types of sensations i.e. temperature, pressure, and pain. A physical distortion or stress in a matter of pressure. There are different types of pressure receptors such as light touch, vibration, and stress.
Temperature has the direct influence of the cold and heat. It opens different ion channels such as one for cold, one for heat and one for extremely cold or hot. Pain is the matter of detecting chemicals which damages the tissues of the body. Pain is categorized as itching and tingling.
Some interesting facts about the sense of touch:
- A human brain pays extremely disproportionate attention to the touch on the different parts of the human body.
- Your sense of touch gets worse as you grow older.
- Human can be touch-blind, it happens that you can’t sense anything.
- Auman possesses a special system for the feeling of social touch.
- To make pain hurts, there is a special system.
- For a baby’s development, touch is mysteriously crucial.
The Sense Of Hearing
We are all well aware of the basic structure of the ear. And we know that at the inner side of ear there is a membrane which moves in accordance to the motion of the fluid. It also has hair cells under it which send signal or message to the brain which enables us to understand what we are hearing.
Some interesting facts about the sense of hearing:
- Anvil, Hammer and Stirrup in the middle ear, are the smallest bones in a human body.
- The inner ear is equal to the circumference of a pencil eraser.
- Your sense hearing is dependent on tiny hairs located in deep inside of ear. If you lose them, you lose the sense of hearing.
- Most of the people experiencing loss of hearing, are under the age of 65.
- Hearing the loud music excessively is the top cause of losing the sense of hearing.
- Your hearing can be damaged on a single exposure to loud music.
- Ears not just make you hear but also maintain your balance.
The Sight Sense
The sense of vision involves receptor neurons which are sensitive to the light. Light enters through the pupil and lens of the eye, which is then projected onto the retina. The retina is the dark surface inside the eyes and is composed of receptor neurons called rods and cones.
Some interesting facts about the sight sense:
- An individual blinks on an average 15 times per minute.
- Everything appears two-dimensional to a person of one eye.
- Your eye is composed of two million working parts.
- A newborn baby sees everything upside down until his brain learns to process the things right side up.
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