Sense of Touch, Smell and Taste

Sometimes we can recognize food, without even seeing it. We just use our sense of smell to recognize it. We can also recognize a few things like a thorn, cotton, feather, etc without seeing it, with the help of the sense of touch. What exactly are senses of touch, smell, and taste? How do our sensory organs work? Let’s find out more about the sense of touch, the sense of smell, and the sense of taste.

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Sense Of Touch

While shopping, we often buy clothes by checking its quality. But how do we understand if the fabric is soft or rough? It is due to the sense of touch. We use a smartphone with the help of sense of touch. The sensory organ/part for the sense of touch is the skin.

Skin is not located in any specific part, it covers the entire body. It is also the largest sense organ. We use various receptors that help us to react to various situations like i.e. pain, tension, temperature, pressure, weight, etc It helps us to move away from danger. For example, we move our hand away from a hot object if we touch it.

Sense Of Smell

We can instantly identify the freshness of food or flowers by smelling it. We can easily tell whether the food is fresh or rotten. To identify this, we use our sense of smell. The organ for the sense of smell is the nose. Generally, animals have a stronger sense of smell as compared to human beings. The nose is also known as an olfactory organ.

We are able to detect thousands of different smells or odors. The human nose is, in fact, the main organ of taste as well as smell. Anosmia is an infection that causes us to lose our sense of smell when we have a cold, sinus, nasal allergy, etc.

 Sense Of  Taste

There are times when we find our food too salty or too sweet. To determine this we use our sense of taste. The tongue is the organ for the sense of taste. The tongue basically has four taste receptors i.e. salty, sweet, sour and bitter.

The behind part of the tongue detects bitter taste, the frontmost part of the tongue detects salty taste, the side part of the tongue detects sour taste and the middle and front part of the tongue detects sweet taste.

Now, you must be wondering which part of the tongue detects spicy taste. Well, spicy is often considered as a “taste” but contrary to the popular belief, spicy taste is technically is just a pain signal sent by the nerves that transmit touch and temperature sensations.

Question For You

Q. How many taste receptors does the tongue have?

1. The tongue has three taste receptors.
2. There are no taste receptors in the tongue.
3. The tongue has millions of taste receptors.
4. The tongue has four taste receptors.

Ans: d. There are four receptors in our tongue i.e. salty taste receptor, sour taste receptor, sweet taste receptor and sweet taste receptor.