In three episodes ("Smell And Taste", "Hearing And Balance", "Touch And Vision") is a BBC Natural History Unit production documentary about "Human Senses".
1. Human Senses movie series | Smell And Taste - we're going to find out how our twin senses of smell and taste keep us alive. We'll be looking at how when it comes to food. Humans have a high-risk strategy. We'll put almost anything in our mouths. Relying on our sense of taste to stop us from poisoning ourselves. We'll be finding out why something's smell so good to us. And others are totally disgusting. And we'll be taking a whiff of the worlds worst smell.
2. Human Senses movie series | Hearing And Balance - In this episode of the human senses we're looking at the strange things that go on inside our ears. And how the tiny system of bony tubes in the inner ear evolved to carry out 2 separate senses, hearing and balance. We'll see what happens when you push your sense of balance right too the edge. We'll discover why acrobats fall down when the lights go out. And how astronauts learn to find their feet in a weight less world. We're extremely sensitive to sounds that warn us of danger or sounds that suggest we're in the prescience of a promising mate. But sounds can be about far more than danger and sex. There's a sound some animals create designed to influence their fellow creatures feelings in astonishing ways. It's the sound of music.
3. Human Senses movie series | Touch And Vision - How does our visual system measure up to the best eyes in the animal kingdom? We'll be testing the amazing things we do with our eyes. How we can instantly spot attractive people in a crowded room, our eyes guide us around the world with astonishing accuracy, and even let us see in to the future. When it comes to touch we'll reveal why we love the feel of some things. And loathe others we'll discover what our skin has in common with an elephants. We use touch to explore the world. Instantly we can tell how something feels to us.
Human Senses Review
The human sense movie is superbly good at some things.
A perfume in tended to bring pleasure, can be tinged with feelings of sadness. The last time I smelt this out of no where l had this scene as me as a little kid.
As we walked in to the gardens, the smell of that cut grass took me back to when I was about 5 years old.
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BBC Human Senses movie series online | Smell And Taste movie
Compared to many animals our sense of smell is puny. But when it comes to truly bad smells, even a tiny whiff can knock us to our knees. Compared to all that even a skunk smells sweet. We all have a remarkable ability to acquire a taste for things even if we hate them at first. And that adventurous sense of taste gives us humans an amazing advantage. Just imagine if we simply didn't take to new tastes. What if we were like the pickiest animal on the planet? When we smell something the nerve signals from the nose travel to 2 different areas of the brain.
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BBC Human Senses movie series online | Hearing And Balance movie
We'll uncover the sounds, which have the most powerful effects on us. Prepare yourself for an auditory assault course. Sarah Collins has found that most women imagine that men with rich deep voices are more muscular, attractive and even have hairier chests than their higher voiced counterparts. If a man has a deeper voice, the kind of assumptions women make about that man, tend to be that he's slightly more dominant. That he is somehow more masculine, more likely to have bristles. The balance sense in the ear tells us one other vital thing.
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BBC Human Senses movie series online | Touch And Vision movie
Scientists have shown that grooming releases endorphins in to the blood stream. Endorphins are feeling good chemicals. So it's a stress reliever for the monkey that's being groomed. And even for the monkey that's doing the grooming. Grooming just about anything makes them feel good.
Everything that normally happens automatically is now a real struggle. You have to think about what you're seeing, work out where things are, and then move your hands. It makes you realize how even the simplest movements depend on accurate guidance from our eyes. Where is my hand? At first anyone entering this strange upside world has the hand eye co-ordination of a toddler but after a few hours there are signs of improvement. Hubert seems to have no trouble, but then he's spent weeks wearing the glasses, and to begin with he was just as bad. Whoops, whoops I just realized that I'm going to drink it with my forehead. I'm sorry. As the days went by Hubert adapted brilliantly. His brain started to make sense of this topsy-turvy world. Making the right movements automatically without having to think about it. Ooh. After 8 hours. Its time for our volunteer to attempt riding the bike. It takes a monumental effort of concentration not to fall off, but he's just about hanging on.
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Human Senses Quotes
We like salt because we need it to replace salt loss through sweat. And above all we love sweet foods. Because sugar means energy.
The more dots the more sensitive to taste. The most sensitive are called super tasters. And they can have 100 times more taste buds than other people.
The secret is to decide what's up and what's down and to completely ignore the confused signals from the sensors in your inner ear.
Humming bird consume half their weight in sugar every day.
Our sense of taste has evolved to guide us to what we need where ever we go.
Our reaction to foods that make us ill is a basic biological defense mechanism and the effects can be extremely powerful.
Frozen and grungy. But our sense of touch does much more than just tells us what's there. But touching something smooth and soft feels lovely.
The part of the brain where we store memories of any intense emotions we've had smelling that smell. So the smell triggers a strong feeling based on our previous experiences.
It's the exact combination of signals coming from them skin that allows the brain to work out what's touching us. But our sense of touch does more than just tell us what's there.
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So like all animals the tastes we crave are determined by what we need. In our case sweet, and salty foods. When bitter or sweet chemicals land on the surface of taste sensing cells, a bitter or a sweet signal is sent to the brain. Salty and sour chemicals are even smaller. They pass right through the walls of the taste sensing cells. Once inside they trigger a salty or a sour signal to the brain. But the same food can taste very different to different people. That's because some people are far more sensitive to tastes than others. We've come to San Diego zoo to meet an animal that has a taste for just one kind of food. Eucalyptus. For breakfast it eucalyptus, for lunch its eucalyptus. For dinner its eucalyptus again. To us it's an incredible boring diet. But it suits the koala just fine. Koala it's an old aboriginal word which means no drink.
Sounds are just tiny movements of the air molecules around us. But our ears contain a wonderful system for detecting these faint ripples in the air. First the sound waves are funneled down the ear cannel to the eardrum. If they were slowed down massively this is what they'd look like. The moving air makes the eardrum vibrate. These vibrations are then amplified by 3 hinged bones. The bones are connected to a tube called the cochlea, which is full of fluid. The vibrations of the bones send ripples through the fluid, and these ripples move rows of microscopic hair cells. As the hair cells are bent they send nerve signals to the brain, which then works out what the sound is. It's an extraordinary contraption but it works beautifully. We're equipped with a fantastic system for hearing a phenomenal range of sounds. For that basic information we rely on a set of special balance organs deep within the ear. This series of tubes and chambers no bigger than a pea monitors ever move made by our head. So when we take off, or skid to a halt, or go in to a spin. These movements are sensed within the inner ear. The tubes are full of fluid. Inside the tubes there are tufts of microscopic hair cells. When we move our heads the fluid move and the hair cells are bent. They send nerve signals to the brain. The tubes point in 3 different directions. And that's how we can sense movement in 3 dimensions.
So why do we care so much about how things feel? We've come to Jodhpur in Northern India, to pay a visit to some distant relations, a troop of hanuman Langers. These monkeys hold clues to the origins of our sense of touch. For most animals the occasional touch is part of normal life. But monkeys adore touching and being touched. We come from a long line of touchy feely ancestors and for them like us touch is more than just simply exploring the world. Your feet would be as big as your chest, and half of their length would be your toes. It's no wonder they're so ticklish. And your face is much more sensitive than your chest and back so that too would be bigger. Your lips would put Mick Jaggers to shame. Your tongue would be as big as your already oversized hands.
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