Our bodies have five special senses that help us explore and understand the world. Today, let’s learn about two of these senses: taste and hearing. They’re super important and really cool!
Taste is a wonderful sense that lets us enjoy yummy flavors. Humans are unique because we cook and flavor our food to make it taste even better. This tasty adventure happens thanks to tiny helpers on our tongues called taste buds.
Did you know your tongue has about 100,000 taste buds? These little guys are spread all over your tongue and help you taste different flavors. Even though it seems like we can taste lots of flavors, our taste buds can only detect a few basic ones:
When you eat, your saliva helps break down the food, and your taste buds send signals to your brain. Your brain then tells you what flavor you’re tasting!
Did you know that taste and smell work together? The smell sensors in your nose help you recognize different scents. Without smell, foods like apples and pears might taste almost the same! Even though our sense of smell isn’t as strong as some animals, it makes our tasting experience much better.
Hearing is another important sense that lets us enjoy sounds like music and talking. Our ears are amazing and have three main parts:
When sound waves enter your ear, they travel through the ear canal to the eardrum. The eardrum vibrates and sends these vibrations to the tiny bones, which make the sound louder and send it to the inner ear. Here, about 240,000 tiny hair cells move and change the vibrations into signals that your brain understands as sound.
Besides hearing, the inner ear helps us keep our balance. The fluid inside helps us know our position and movement, so we can stand up straight and move smoothly.
Our senses of taste and hearing are incredible! Taste lets us enjoy different flavors, and hearing connects us to the world and each other. Learning about these senses helps us appreciate how our bodies work to understand the world around us.
