--- title: Senses: nose, tongue and skin — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Senses: nose, tongue and skin», a lesson of the biology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: You smell cookies baking from the other room because tiny invisible bits of the cookies have floated through the air, up your nose, and land --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/) / Senses: nose, tongue and skin # Senses: nose, tongue and skin Lesson 70 of the biology course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/0/) — You smell cookies baking from the other room because tiny invisible bits of the cookies have floated through the air, up your nose, and landed on smell cells that tell your brain «cookies!». - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/1/) — Smell and taste work as a team: when a cold blocks your nose, your dinner tastes of almost nothing, because much of what we call flavour is really smell. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/2/) — Your tongue's bumps hold taste buds for sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami, and every part of the tongue can taste all five; the old «tongue map» is a myth. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/3/) — Your skin is your biggest sense organ, with sensors for touch, pressure, heat, cold and pain, and some tricks fool them: a chilli feels hot though it is not, and mint feels cold though it is not. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/4/) — Animals push these senses much further: a sniffer dog can smell things hidden in a suitcase, and a cat feels its way through gaps with its whiskers. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/5/) — Smells are tiny bits of a substance floating in the air; they land on smell cells high inside the nose, which send signals to the brain. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/6/) — Much of flavour is smell: when the nose is blocked, food smells cannot reach the smell cells at the back of the nose, so food seems to taste of nothing. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/7/) — A dog has around 200 to 300 million smell cells against our roughly 5 to 6 million, and a big part of its brain works on smells, so sniffer dogs can find hidden things in bags. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/8/) — Taste buds sense five basic tastes: sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami, the savoury taste of cheese and tomatoes; many poisons taste bitter, so bitterness can warn us. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/9/) — The «tongue map», with sweet only at the tip and bitter only at the back, is a myth; all parts of the tongue with taste buds can taste all five tastes. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/10/) — The bumps on the tongue are papillae, and many of them hold taste buds; an adult has about 2,000 to 10,000 taste buds, and they are replaced about every week or two. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/12/) — Menthol in mint switches on the nerve sensors that detect cold, so the mouth feels cool though it is not colder. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/13/) — The skin has several kinds of touch sensors: some feel light touch, some pressure, some vibration and some stretching, which is how we tell silk from sandpaper. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/14/) — Fingertips are packed with touch sensors and can feel two points just 2 to 3 millimetres apart, while on the back two points a few centimetres apart can feel like one; that is why blind people read the tiny raised dots of Braille with their fingertips. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/15/) — Skin judges hot and cold by change: after warm water, lukewarm water feels cool, and after cold water, the same lukewarm water feels warm. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/16/) — Pain sensors send fast signals to the spinal cord, which makes the hand jerk away from a hot radiator even before the brain feels the pain. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/70-senses-nose-tongue-and-skin/17/) — Cat whiskers are thick, deep-rooted hairs with many nerve endings that sense touch and tiny movements of air, and they help a cat judge whether it can fit through a gap. - ← previous: [Senses: eyes and ears](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/69-senses-eyes-and-ears/) - next →: [Growing: teeth, height, hair, nails, from baby to grown-up](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/71-growing-from-baby-to-grown-up/) - ↑ back to [Biology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/biology/)