The Human Senses

Nearly everyone has experienced a moment when a faint fragrance brings a memory of a long-lost moment in time crashing back to the forefront of their minds.Often we will have forgotten about the event completely, yet it transpires our unfathomable minds have filed it neatly in some unreachable corner of the brain, primed for instant retrieval.




This documentary sets out to discover the biological reasons why humans eat such a range of diverse tasting dishes, from rotten raw ducks eggs to a sweaty blue cheese, and watch while contestants at chilli eating contest push their taste buds to the limit. Compared to many animals, humans have a ‘try anything once’ attitude to food and this has allowed us to populate every corner of the planet, while many other animals depend totally on one food source for their energy, which limits where they can survive.

PART ONE

PART TWO

PART THREE

Watch Programme 3 - Touch and Vision in Educational | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Humans are very sensitive to touch and different parts of our body have different sensitivities. In fact, when it comes to our sense of touch, humans are similar to elephants.We have a few areas where we are extremely sensitive, just like the elephant's trunk, and the rest of our body is surprisingly insensitive, like the elephant's thick hide. The different density of touch sensors in the skin, in different parts of the body, explains why some parts of the body seem to have a much lower pain threshold. A microscopic splinter in a finger can be extremely painful, while a
cut on your leg may not hurt as much!