Our Five Senses

We have 5 senses that help us learn about the world we live in. We use our senses to see, smell, touch, taste, and hear.

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Our Eyes help us to see.

To see what we do now, the light bounces off the object you are looking at, into the pupil.  The light crosses your lens and the images gets focused.

Your eyes are act like a video camera. Everything you look at is then sent to your brain for processing and storage much like a computer disk.

• Most people blink every 2-10 seconds.
• Each time you blink, you shut your eyes for 0.3 seconds, which means your eyes are closed at least 30 minutes a day just from blinking.
• If you only had one eye, everything would appear two-dimensional. (This does not work just by closing one eye.)

Our Ears help us to Hear!

Your ears pick up and send information about sounds to your brain

How You HearWhen an object makes a noise, it sends vibrations (better known as sound waves) speeding through the air. These vibrations are then funneled into your ear canal by your outer ear. As the vibrations move into your middle ear, they hit your eardrum and cause it to vibrate as well. This sets off a chain reaction of vibrations. Your eardrum, which is smaller and thinner than the nail on your pinky finger, vibrates the three smallest bones in your body: first, the hammer, then the anvil, and finally, the stirrup. The stirrup passes the

• vibrations into a coiled tube in the inner ear called the cochlea.
• When you go up to high elevations, the change in pressure causes your ears to pop.
• Children have more sensitive ears than adults. They can recognize a wider variety of noises.
• Dolphins have the best sense of hearing among animals. They are able to hear 14 times better than humans.
• Animals hear more sounds than humans.
• An earache is caused by too much fluid putting pressure on your eardrum. Earaches are often the result of an infection, allergies or a virus

Our Nose helps us to smell things.

The sensory hairs in your nose  sense the odor and transmit messages to your brain. Your brain, therefore knows the odor.

• If your nose is at its best, you can tell the difference between 4000-10,000 smells!
• As you get older, your sense of smell gets worse. Children are more likely to have better senses of smell than their parents or grandparents

We taste things with our tongue

You can taste sweets in the front of your tongue and sour taste at both sides of your tongue At the back, you taste bitter things. All over your tongue, you taste salty things.

• We have almost 10,000 taste buds inside our mouths; even on the roofs of our mouths.
• In general, girls have more tastebuds than boys.
• Taste is the weakest of the five senses
• Insects have the most highly developed sense of taste. They have taste organs on their feet, antennae, and mouthparts
• Fish can taste with their fins and tail as well as their mouth

 Your sense of touch is found all over.

This is because your sense of touch originates in the bottom layer of your skin called the dermis.

    Sense-Sational Facts

• You have more pain nerve endings than any other type.
• The least sensitive part of your body is the middle of your back.
• The most sensitive areas of your body are your hands, lips, face, neck, tongue, fingertips and feet.
• Shivering is a way your body has of trying to get warmer.
• There are about 100 touch receptors in each of your fingertips
• Rattlesnakes use their skin to feel the body heat of other animals

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