The senses
There are five ‘basic’ senses, with which we are all familiar:
vision, hearing, touch, taste and smell.
But, there are actually (at least) seven other senses that bring the total to 12: pain, heat, cold, hunger, thirst, vestibular (sense of balance), and proprioception (sense of limb position)
Each of your senses is designed to pick up signals in the environment (light signals for vision, chemical signals for smell, etc.). Some of your senses are tuned into sources of signals that are nearby, and some for distant signals:
‘Far’ senses: vision, hearing, smell
‘Near senses’: taste, touch, pain, heat, cold
‘Internal’ senses: proprioception, hunger, thirst, vestibular
01. How many senses are there?
1:40 PM
You already know your five senses: vision, hearing, smell, touch and taste, and the five sensory organs that go along with them: your eyes, ears, nose, skin and tongue. But there are at least seven other senses that I can think of....
IMAGE CREDITS
It is interesting to note that we could have had yet more sensory systems (magnetic sensors like pigeons; electrical field detectors like some fish), or have had different tunings for the ones we already have (eyes that see ultraviolet like some birds; ears that hear into the ultrasonic). We might also have had fewer (no eyes, like some cave fish) or one’s the don’t work as well (‘color blindness’ like a cat).
Whenever you are thinking about a sensory system, ask yourself: What does this system detect? What is it good for? What is the ‘cost’ associated with having it? How does it help the organism survive in its environment?
Your sensory organs turn the signals, or ‘information’ from the environment into the electrical signals in your brain; this is a process called transduction. In turn, your brain creates a representation of these signals - these are your perceptions.