Name: __________________________________ Bio 100 - Lab 13

Lab 13: Senses

I. Learning Objectives:

By the end of this lab activity, you should be able to:

1. Describe the different senses humans have.

2. Compare human senses with those of other animals.
3. Describe the lab activities that test different senses.
4. Analyze the information gathered from the different senses.
5. Determine which senses are most useful for gathering information in different
environments.

II. Background Information:

1. Senses in Humans
A sensory system consists of sensory receptors, neural pathways, and parts of the brain
involved in sensory perception. The human sense organs (eyes, ears, tongue, skin and nose)
contain receptors that relay information through sensory neurons to the appropriate places
within the nervous system (Fig.13.1).

Fig. 13.1. The human olfactory system relays messages from the nasal cavity to the brain.1

1 OpenStax College: http://cnx.org/contents/s3XqfSLV@6/Sensory-Perception

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Human beings have a multitude of senses. While sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch are
the five traditionally recognized, scientists recognize that humans have additional senses to
detect temperature, thirst, hunger, time, and balance, just to name a few.

Sight or vision is the capability of the eyes to focus and detect images of visible light on
photoreceptors in the retina of each eye. There are two types of photoreceptors: rods and
cones. Rods are very sensitive to low light, but do not distinguish colors. Cones distinguish
colors, but are less sensitive to dim light. The eye takes approximately 20–30 minutes to
fully adapt from bright sunlight to complete darkness and become ten thousand to one
million times more sensitive than at full daylight. In this process, the eye's perception of
color changes as well. Conversely, it takes approximately five minutes for the eye to adapt to
bright sunlight from darkness.

Hearing is the sense of sound perception and is all about vibration. Mechanoreceptors turn
motion into electrical nerve pulses, which are located in the inner ear. Hearing is a
mechanical sense because sound vibrations are mechanically conducted from the eardrum to
hair-like fibers in the inner ear. Humans can detect a range of about 20 to 20,000 Hertz.

Taste refers to the ability to detect the taste of substances such as food, certain minerals, and
poisons, etc. The sense of taste is often confused with the "sense” of flavor, which is a
combination of taste and smell perception. Flavor depends on odor, texture, and temperature
as well as on taste. Humans perceive taste through sensory organs called taste buds
concentrated on the upper surface of the tongue. The sensation of taste can be categorized by
five primary taste qualities: sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami (savory).

Smell or olfaction is the other "chemical" sense. Unlike taste, there are hundreds of olfactory
receptors, each binding to a particular molecular feature. Odor molecules possess a variety of
features and, thus, excite specific receptors more or less strongly. This combination of
excitatory signals from different receptors makes up what we perceive as the molecule's
smell.

Touch or mechanoreception, is a perception resulting from activation of neural receptors,

generally in the skin including hair follicles, but also in the tongue and throat.

2. Senses in Other Animals

Other living organisms have receptors to sense the world around them, including many of the
senses listed above for humans. However, the mechanisms and capabilities vary widely.

Vision:
Cats have the ability to see in low light due to muscles surrounding their irises to contract
and expand pupils as well as having a reflective membrane that optimizes the image. Pit
vipers, pythons and some boas have organs that allow them to detect infrared light, such that
these snakes are able to sense the body heat of their prey. It has been found that birds and
some insects have the ability to see in the ultraviolet range.

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Hearing:
Different animals can detect different frequency ranges than humans. Sounds that are lower
than human hearing (below 20 Hz) are called infrasound and sounds that are higher than
human hearing (above 20,000 Hz) are called ultrasound. The frequency ranges that some
animals can hear are listed below.

Animal Frequency (Hz)

Human 20 - 20,000
Elephant 5 - 12,000
Dog 50 - 45,000
Cat 45 - 65,000
Mouse 1,000 - 100,000
Bat 2,000 - 120,000
Dolphin 75 - 150,000

Smell:
Most non-human mammals have a much keener sense of smell than humans, although the
mechanism is similar. Sharks combine their keen sense of smell with timing to determine the
direction of a smell. They follow the nostril that first detected the smell. Insects have
olfactory receptors on their antennae.

Vomeronasal organ:
Many animals (salamanders, reptiles, mammals) have a vomeronasal organ that is connected
with the mouth cavity. In mammals it is mainly used to detect pheromones to mark their
territory, trails, and sexual state. Reptiles like snakes and monitor lizards make extensive use
of it as a smelling organ by transferring scent molecules to the vomeronasal organ with the
tips of the forked tongue.

Taste:
Flies and butterflies have taste organs on their feet, allowing them to taste anything they land
on. Catfish have taste organs across their entire bodies, and can taste anything they touch,
including chemicals in the water.

Echolocation is the ability to determine orientation to other objects through interpretation of

reflected sound (like sonar). Certain animals, including bats and cetaceans, have this ability
and they use it most often this to navigate through poor lighting conditions or to identify and
track prey.

Electroreception is the ability to detect electric fields. Several species of fish, sharks, and
rays have the capacity to sense changes in electric fields in their immediate vicinity.

Magnetoreception is the ability to detect the direction one is facing based on the Earth's
magnetic field. Directional awareness is most commonly observed in birds. It has also been
observed in insects such as bees.

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III. Reading Assignments:

Recommended background reading (optional):

1. PTC: Genes and Bitter Taste

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/basics/ptc/

2. Crittervision: The world as animals see (and sniff) it

http://www.newscientist.com/special/crittervision

3. Discover Magazine: 20 Things You Didn’t Know About Animal Senses

http://discovermagazine.com/2014/may/26-20-things-animal-senses

4. 10 Unusual Animal Senses

http://listverse.com/2013/04/13/10-unusual-animal-senses/

5. Hearing Test
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-iCZElJ8m0

6. Vision Test
https://enchroma.com/pages/test

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IV. Pre-Lab Questions

1. List the five basic, as well as the additional senses that humans possess.

2. List three senses that other animals have and that humans lack. How does each of these
senses help these animals find mates, catch prey or avoid predators?

3. a) What is the range of sound frequencies that humans can detect? __________________

b) How does this range compare to that in dogs? __________________________________

c) A dog whistle emits a sound in the ultrasonic range, which people cannot hear but dogs
can. What frequency range does a dog whistle likely have? __________________

4. a) Based on the background information, which animal can detect infrasound?

b) Which animals can detect ultrasound?

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V. Lab Exercise

A. Materials
Per Room: Per Room:

• Colored foam sticks • Ribbon/fishing line

• Taste solutions and papers • 2-point discriminator
• Jelly beans • Paper bag containing unknown objects
• Q-tips • Colored pens
• Tuning forks • Black light
• Meter stick • Colored beads
• Smell kit

B. Procedure

A. Vision

1. Adaptation to low light

1. To determine how the different photoreceptors in your eyes adjust to changing light
conditions, you will be asked the following activity with the help of your instructor.
2. Under regular light, sort the foam pieces in the plastic bag into separate piles of matching
color as quickly as you can. This is your control experiment.
How long does it take you to sort the colors? Check with a partner to make sure the colors
were sorted correctly.

3. Shuffle the colored shapes to mix up the colors.

4. When your instructor turns off the classroom lights, immediately sort the pieces by color
again, working as quickly as you can (don’t take longer than you did for your control
experiment).
5. Review the results of your experiment when the lights are turned back on.
Are any of the colors sorted incorrectly? If so, which ones?

6. Reset the experiment, and wait for the instructor to turn off the lights again. This time,
wait 1 minute before quickly sorting the colors.

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How do your results compare with the previous test under low light?

How does it compare with the control experiment?

Under what circumstances would natural selection favor the ability of the eyes to quickly
adjust to changing light conditions?

2. Ultraviolet Light

Which animals can see ultraviolet light?

What is the evolutionary advantage of being able to see ultraviolet light?

1. This activity will simulate the visual cues that some pollinators perceive from plants.
2. Observe the colored beads on display on the side or back counter in the room using the
ambient white light in the room.
Which bead color is the most conspicuous under white light? _____________________

3. Now turn on the black light provided and observe the beads again.
Which bead color is the most conspicuous under black light? _____________________

What is the selective pressure on plants if their pollinators can see only visible light?

How does the selective pressure on plants change if the pollinators can see both visible light
AND UV light?

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3. Peripheral Color Blindness

Which kind of photoreceptor in our eyes can detect color? ________________

Which photoreceptor is sensitive to low light but doesn’t detect color? ______________

The peripheral regions of your retina have less sensitive color perception because there are
fewer cones along the periphery of the retina compared to the center. This phenomenon is
called peripheral color blindness. The following activity aims to illustrate this concept.
1. Have your partner hand you one of the provided colored pens. Without looking at the
pen, hold it behind your head.
2. Slowly move the pen towards the front of your face while staring forward. STOP when
you can see the pen but cannot distinguish what color it is.
Why do you think that there are fewer color-sensitive photoreceptors along the periphery of
our eyes? What kind of visual stimuli can we detect “out of the corner of our eyes”?

B. Touch
1. Concentration of Touch Receptors
You have different concentrations of touch receptors on different parts of your body. Places
on you body that come in contact with tactile stimuli frequently tend to have many touch
receptors and are therefore more sensitive to touch. Also, places on your body where touch
is necessary for a particular physiological function may also have many touch receptors.

Where on your body would you expect to have a high concentration of touch receptors (of the
five locations listed in the table on the next page)?

1. Choose 1cm2 areas on the face, neck, shoulder, back of arm and fingertip of your partner.
2. Firmly tap this area with a piece of ribbon 20 times.
3. Vary the speed of the taps so that your partner cannot predict when the next tap will be.
4. The person being tapped should not watch their partner, but should look away and count
the number of times they feel a tap.
5. Both partners should take turns with this activity and record their data below.

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Number of Hits Detected (out of 20)

Location on Body Person 1 Person 2 Average of the two partners
Face

Neck

Shoulder

Back of Arm

Fingertip

Was your hypothesis regarding the concentration of touch receptors supported by your
experimental results?

2. Two-Point Discrimination
Touch receptors can also differ from each other by the total area over which each receptor
detects touch stimuli. These areas are called receptive fields. Large receptive fields allow
the cell to detect changes over a wider area, but lead to less precise perception. For example,
fingers have many, densely packed receptors with small receptive fields while the back has
fewer receptors, each with large receptive fields.

Of the five locations listed in the table above, where would you expect to have touch
receptors with the smallest receptive fields?

1. Choose the same 1cm2 areas on the face, neck, shoulder, back of arm and fingertip of
your partner as you did in the previous test.
2. Using the calipers or two-point discriminator tool, firmly touch the chosen location,
starting with the smallest distance. Make sure the two points make contact with the
partner’s skin at the same time.
3. Do NOT tell your partner what distance you are testing.
4. The person being tested should indicate, without looking, whether they feel one point or
two separate points for each distance.
5. Both partners should take turns with this activity and record the minimum distance at
which they felt two separate points for each location tested.

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Minimum distance at which two points were detected (mm)

Location on Body Person 1 Person 2 Average of the two partners
Face

Neck

Shoulder

Back of Arm

Fingertip

Was your hypothesis regarding receptive fields supported by your experimental results?

3. Mystery Bag
1. Each student should complete this experiment individually and not share the results with
group members until everyone in the group has had a chance to complete the activity.
2. Pick up the marked paper bag that contains six items inside it.
3. Without looking in the bag, place your hand inside and feel the different objects.
4. Do NOT take the items out of the bag at any point.
5. Complete the data table below with the requested information.
6. When you are finished, look inside the bag to check your answers.

Material composition of item Texture Item name

(plastic, wood, metal, etc.) (rough, smooth, etc.) (your guess)

Were there any items in the bag that were difficult to identify using only your sense of touch?

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D. Hearing
1. Place a meter-stick next to your partner’s ear and have them hold it in place.
2. Strike one of the tuning forks on a book to make it vibrate.
3. Put the fork close to your partner's ear and move it away from his or her ear along the
meter-stick. Move the tuning fork at a rate of 10cm/sec.
4. Stop moving the tuning fork when your partner tells you when they can no longer hear
the sound.
5. Your partner should record the pitch of the tuning fork and the max distance at which
they could hear it.
6. Repeat the experiment with two other pitches.
7. Switch roles and have your partner conduct the same experiment on you.
Pitch Maximum distance at which sound
(Low/Medium/High) could be detected

How did the pitch affect how far you could hear the sound? Which pitch is more easily
detectable over longer distances?

Discuss the ways in which this experimental design could be improved to achieve more
accurate results.

E. Taste

1. Identifying Tastes
1. Add a few drops of solution A to one of the clean spoons provided.
2. Taste the solution and try to identify the taste (sweet, salty, bitter or sour).
3. Repeat this procedure with the same spoon for solutions B, C and D.
4. Record your results in the data table below then check your answers with the key
provided.

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Taste Solution Taste

A.

B.

C.

D.

How accurate were you in your analysis? Were some tastes easier or harder to identify than
others? If so, what might be the reason for this?

2. Taste Paper - PTC

PTC (Phenylthiocarbamide) has the unusual property in that it either tastes very bitter or is
virtually tasteless, depending on the genetic makeup of the taster. The ability to taste PTC is
dependent on an inherited dominant genetic trait. Although PTC is not found in nature, the
ability to taste it correlates strongly with the ability to taste other bitter substances that do
occur naturally, many of which are toxins. Ability to taste PTC may be correlated with a
dislike of plants in the Brassica genus (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussels sprout)
presumably due to chemical similarities.

Touch one piece of the PTC paper to your tongue.

Are you able to taste PTC? _______________________

Do any plants in the Brassica genus taste bitter to you? _________________________

Under what evolutionary conditions would natural selection favor a genetically

predetermined tendency as opposed to a learned tendency to avoid or seek out a certain
taste?

3. Taste vs. Flavor

Describe the difference between taste and flavor. Which senses do we rely on to determine
flavor?

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1. Take one jellybean out of the container carefully, using the spatula or spoon provided.
2. Hold your nose closed tightly and bite off half the jellybean and chew it.
Can you determine the flavor of the jellybean?______________________________
3. Let go of your nose and eat the rest of the jellybean.
Are you able to determine the flavor this time?______________________________

What does this result suggest about how we perceive the flavor of jellybeans and other
artificial and complex flavors?

F. Smell
1. Smell each of the numbered scents and record what you think the smell is.
2. Also record the memory the smell invokes (if any).
3. In between each sample, smell the jar of coffee or the jar marked with an asterisk to clear
your senses.
Sample # Name of smell Memory

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

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VI. Post-Lab Questions

1. For each of the following senses, identify the advantages and the disadvantages of
predominantly relying on that sense to find food, escape predators, find mates, etc. To
answer the questions, you will need to think of different animals that rely primarily on that
sense to gather information. One example has been provided for you.
Sense Advantages / Benefits Disadvantages / Limitations
Sense of taste can provide detailed Requires close contact with the
information if the animal has stimulus, which can be harmful if
Taste sensitive taste receptors. the item being tasted is poisonous.

Smell

Touch

Sight

Hearing

Echolocation

Electroreception

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