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Extra senses you didn't know you had
The five senses are commonly known (or they should be) and include sight, smell, touch, taste and hearing but there are many more ‘extra senses’ you probably didn’t realise you use every day.
No, we’re not talking X-Men style mutant senses or the terrifying ability to see dead people, but instead the reactions our bodies have, and to the environment, that we experience on a daily basis but don’t recognise as a ‘sense’.
Be prepared to feel like a superhero anyway, because you probably have most of the senses on the following list:
Hearing
Okay, we’ve already covered this one as a basic but many take their hearing for granted and don’t recognise that without it you would be left feeling more than lost in the world. Hearing essentially works through vibration, tiny hairs in your cochlea (inner ear) pick up sound vibrations and let your brain know what’s happening.
Some people’s hearing can go one step further and they have what is known as Absolute Pitch, which means they can identify and reproduce a tone without needing a reference.
That’s why it’s so important to get your hearing checked regularly as you get older, you don’t want to miss out on hearing laughter, birdsong or the sound of your favourite music. On another note, if you are worried about your hearing get yourself down to a specialist, such as Hidden Hearing, for a check up.
Nociception
This is essentially the sensation of pain, it’s not a fun sense but a necessary one. Pain lets us know when to stop and works from its own sensory system which uses three types of pain receptors including skin (cutaneous), bones and joints (somatic) and organs (visceral).
Of course there are also people out there who don’t have this sense and suffer (or don’t, depending on how you look at it) from a condition called Corpus Callosum, which means that the body does not react to pain receptors.
Magnetoception
Okay, maybe we are kind of mutants after all? Maybe not. This sense doesn’t allow us to move cutlery across the room with our minds or rip down metal gates, instead it's our ability to detect magnetic fields which give us our sense of direction – or lack of if it for some people.
Proprioception
Phew, try saying that three times fast. Proprioception is when we understand where our body parts are. So, for example, we understand that our hand is attached to our arm and our legs are below our waist – without having to look and check.
Ovulation danger sense
Listen to your bodies, ladies, because when you are ovulating you have the ability to sense danger better. Oh, and you can spot snakes better than other people at this time apparently, which of course backs up the belief that women have heightened danger awareness whilst ovulating. You’re basically Spiderwoman once a month.
Lying perception
Picking up when someone is lying to us is another one of our senses, we can notice minute changes in someone’s facial expression in a conversation and can even detect when a smile is real or fake.
Time
Have you ever forgotten to set an alarm but still woken up in the morning around the right time? Well that’s our sense of time working in the background to give us that little extra hand on a daily basis. We also have the ability to ‘slow time down’ in a stressful situation in order to act quickly and speed up our brain processes.
So now it’s time to give yourself a pat on the back - you and your senses are pretty incredible! They might not give you an excuse to wear a pair of pants over your tights and go out fighting crime but they do help you out all day, every day.
