Senses you probably don't realise you've got....

Did you like my post this morning on human echolocation?

I did, but I would: My ego's massive.

In case you liked it a tenth as much as I did: Here are a few senses that we all use, every second of every day, without realising.....

Proprioception: Sense of body movement.

Shut your eyes and touch your nose. Ok, how the hell did you manage that? Did you hear, or smell where your hand was? Did you have one hand on the other, touching it to tell you where it was? No?

 I said on your nose, ON your nose, not... oh what's the point....

Then you must have a built in sense of where bits of your body are! It's closely intertwined with your sense of touch, but in most ways it's a separate sense: A part of the brain called the cerebellum ties together lots of unconscious signals into a map of where your finger and nose actually are.

Thermoception: Sense of heat.

"You cheating git!" I hear* you cry, "that's just part of the sense of touch!"

Oh yeah?

Then how come the sensors in your skin that respond to heat and cold are specialised for heat and cold, and quite seperate from the ones that sense touch?

 

Image above: The Pit Viper, nature's heat seeking missile...

If you shut your eyes on a sunny day and concentrate you can tell roughly which way the sun is - a very crude form of infra red perception. It works with bonfires, radiators and any other heat source too. But to see it done really well you need to look to pit vipers, who use a more evolved form of thermoception to hunt.....

Equilibrioception: Sense of Balance.

Yes, I know, you did this in school. But when was the last time you stopped to think about it?

In fact our sense of balance - basically just an odd shaped bottle of fluid inside your ear - is really a general purpose force / acceleration / rotation sensor.

Usually it just senses the most dominant force in our lives: Gravity. But, as anyone who has been on a roller coaster can tell you, plenty of other forces can be picked up by it. This leads to confusion in the brain, which leads to vomit showering from the roller-coaster and into the upturned eyes of the watchers below....

 Yes, that will overload your inner ear, and cause sticky rain below....

And now a challenge: There are at least  eleven human senses. So that's the traditional five, these three... who can work out the rest without using the internet?

*Not really, that would imply I can hear you through your computer. Which I can't, I promise.