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  • Anyone else hear the fart at 1:53?

  • touching isn't really a sense, feeling is a sense.

  • How did the lawn mowing g--- Oh, I see...

  • I can't believe humor program missed.. your SENSE of HUMOR! OK, it's an English program, so humour.

  • I only have two senses: horse and common.

  • @ChipArgyle Is horse sense anything like Peter Parker's spider sense?

  • @GoblinXXX Sort of, but it doesn't tingle as much. I kind of wish it did though.

  • @ChipArgyle Try riding bareback.

  • A rugby player took a hard tackle and went down in a heap dislocating his hip. Coach came on and quickly popped the joint back into place; the guy screamed so hard he ripped his vocal cords. At the hospital they discovered that during the dislocation one of his testicles had been drawn up into the joint during the dislocation and when the coach popped his leg back into place the testicle was squashed.

  • @philthy122 that's too painful to even think about. ouch

  • Sensing heat IS touch. Heat is just the vibrations of molecules, so when something is hot the air molecules around it vibrate, and when you put your hand near the object you can feel the hot air because its touching your hand.

  • @omfgstfuandgtfo ; Technically yes, but there are different receptors for those, so practically no.

  • @omfgstfuandgtfo I'd argue that most of the body-awareness stuff (knowing the position of your hands, pain, balance, awareness of hunger, etc) are touch, but a strong case can be made that smell and taste are actually the same sense. A friend of mine lost his sense of smell using a zinc-based nasal spray, and now can't taste at all. And snakes and lizards flick out their tongues to "taste the air" as part of their smell.

  • @GoblinXXX Well... No, not really. It very much depends on your definition of a sense, but there are still 9 minimum. Different senses are controlled by different receptors. For example. If you lost the 'touch' in your hand, you could still feel temperature and pain. With regards to the second point, this is only because many senses are connected. The nose and mouth are connected via the back of your throat, when you get an ear infection, your balance is off, etc.

  • Someone told me that we have a sense that keep our concept of time, that some how measures frequencies of radiation out of the visible spectrum.

  • @TheDeathtacle I find this unlikely. Mostly because, since being out of full time education, I have very little concept of time. I think it's more the structure of your every day life, the routine of it all, which enables us to have a grasp of the days which pass. Or...maybe that's just me. Who knows.

  • @HippehMac Sorry, that isn't quite what I meant. I was talking about how fast time feels; perhaps I should have said 'perception' of time, but that more or less sounds the same. Well, Imagine: if all of those things in your life that you refer to for keeping a sense of how fast time feels are removed, then you're left with a base level of a sense of time speed. And, apparently, a certain part of the eye, thought redundant, is what sets this base layer. Can't remember where he read it.

  • @TheDeathtacle Well, it'd certainly be interesting if true. The perception of time is an odd thing, and I often find my brain contradicting itself. For instance, to me, Christmas feels as if it was longer than a month and a bit ago, and yet i feel as if January passed really quickly.

    Also, it should be said, that I am no where near qualified enough to give a decent argument for or against your friend's idea...I just find it hard to imagine.

    Still, very interesting.

  • @TheDeathtacle you look up The (human) Circadian Clock if you want to know more about the perception of time.

  • @youtubje Hey, thanks for the recommendation. :-)

  • All of the 5 senses cover all of the various senses mentioned in this segment.

  • @TheJimmyNewc Nope. Do you touch your balance? Taste it? Hear it? See it? Smell it? Surely you don't smell your balance.

  • @uiruu I think you see and touch your balance to a significant extent.

  • 19 people have no sense at all :)

  • I don't believe a sense of "Touch" is really a sense. You don't feel that something is soft, you just "feel" the fabric reacting to your hand moving it. Same as if you touch metal, you might "feel" that it's cold (or hot) but it doesn't "feel" particularly like anything.

    I hope this makes sense to someone, I could have worded that a lot better, but still.

  • @MADMANx511 I agree, touch is a collection of senses.

  • @MADMANx511 And you actually have never touched anything. The atoms which make your hand never meet the atoms of the objects you touch.

  • @xXeeDeeXx Nothing can really touch anything if you bring it down to the atomic level. Electrons can't touch due to Pauli's exclusion principle, and nucleii don't touch unless they are undergoing nuclear fusion. However, to say that the atoms that make skin never meet the atoms of the object you touch is simply incorrect. They do and potentially react, an example of which is spilling an acid on your hand. The constituant parts of skin will react with the acid, which is why acid burns

  • Surely if his toe flew up and took his eye out he'd have to be mowing the lawn bare-footed. What kind of idiot would mow their lawn bare-footed?

  • @UphamE unless there's dog poo in the yard i don't see the problem

  • @UphamE Well obviously the kind of idiot that's an Idiot! and he was wearing sandals

  • haha i love alan's "so whyy do they teach me that there are 5" D:<

  • Its all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

  • why is a guyz toe being cut off and it taking his eye out funny? BECAUSE PAIN IS FUNNY!! mawhahahha!

  • I couldn't help it when they started talking about Elements. I heard Earth, Fire, Wind, Water, and automatically followed with HEART! GO, PLANET!

  • There may be more than five "senses", but there are five sensory systems. So Allan wasn't completely wrong

  • @bradbrook601 Actually, there are sensory systems for all the senses. That is what sensory systems do: transmit the input from outside of the body to the brain & translate their meaning. Look up "vestibular system" for an easy example that is not one of the "five senses."

  • @bradbrook601 How do you define a "sensory system," and what are the five?

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  • Karl Pilginkton was right, damn it!

  • wow smart people watching this crap and can laugh with it....

  • damn the soup advert

  • thirst and heat fall under the touch category. proprioception sounds like touch too. the weight of your hand lets you feel it because it puts stress on joints and all that. your mind's ability to track that feeling hardly qualifies as a sense.

  • @waldoman7

    How does thirst have anything to do with touch?!

    We KNOW that our bodies have DIFFERENT SENSORS for heat.

    Proprioception sounds nothing like touch. You are not TOUCHING anything!! Your idea is very easy to disprove: astronauts. There is generally no stress on their joins, because of (almost) zero gravity!

  • I define touch as any sensation that you would describe as a "feeling" which is transmitted by nerves in your skin and anywhere else similar nerves may be. What do you define it as?contact itself? You don't actually feel that. If someone touches you you feel pressure and heat and so on. you don't just get some touch meter in your head giving you a reading of how much you're being touched.Touch is a sense with many facets, but they are all similar and yet distincty different from sight or hearing

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  • @tomthecool

    whether or not it is the scientific definition, mine is the one commonly used by the masses. You've not provided an alternate definition, and I've shown why the one you seem to be implying is flawed.

    and no, i'm not simply defining my idea as the definition of correct here. Balance for instance, I will grant is a bit hard to relate to touch.

  • @waldoman7

    en.wikipedia [dot] org/wiki/Sense

    There is my definition, explanation, etc.

    Your definitions are a few thousand years out of date.

  • I define touch as any sensation that you would describe as a "feeling" which is transmitted by nerves in your skin and anywhere else similar nerves may be. What do you define it as?contact itself? You don't actually feel that. If someone touches you you feel pressure and heat and so on. you don't just get some touch meter in your head giving you a reading of how much you're being touched.Touch is a sense with many facets, but they are all similar and yet distincty different from sight or hearing

  • theres nine touch, hear, smell, sight, taste, pain, temperature, balance and propreoception

  • @cloud9Juggling actually, more than nine. Approx, more than 23.

  • eh, you just had the almost imponderable joy of watching bbcworldwide, which makes you, like, british!

  • The elements: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, SURPRISE!!!

  • @Geokeish surpise is not an element :P but there is an element of surprise :D

  • @Woilem exactly!!!

  • @Geokeish To quote a character in the second part of the best movie series ever:

    The four elements, like man alone, are weak. But together they form the strong fifth element: Boron.

  • I didn't think it was possible to love Stephen Fry any more than I did, until he mentioned the lawn mower story.

  • DFTBA Win

  • Thanks to Charlieissocoollike I knew there were more senses than five!

  • @nori452 same here!

  • Hank brought me here, but I've seen it before :(

  • There ARE only five senses, everything else he is listing here as a "sense" is actually only an APPLICATION of one of more of the five senses.

  • @Babyhowdy233 your wrong

  • @Venomsoar

    No, I'm RIGHT! 

  • @Babyhowdy233 It's a nice thought but wrong all the same.

    What sense would the ability to instinctively know where your hand is come under?

    Because it isnt touch.

  • @Babyhowdy233 So if pain is an application of one of the 5 senses which one? You can't touch, smell, taste, see or hear pain NO! What about balance? You can't see, touch, smell, taste or hear balance. When you feel pain it's not the same feel as in touch where you feel the textures and sizes of an object. You might say to me balance is to do with your ear.. TRUE! That doesn't mean balance is an application of hearing. Think it through.

  • @Babyhowdy233 No Mr.Yank, you are wrong.

  • The host does have an excellent point. Public school teaches us so many things that are just flat out wrong we accept them because we were naive children! They teach us NOT TO QUESTION AUTHORITY in public screwel. Pull your kids out before it's too late.

  • Does a sense of self-preservation count?

  • ᴸᴹᴬᴼ

  • Actually there are only 5, the others are application of other senses.

  • @AlphyLM isnt balance related to smell or hearing or something? not quite sure

  • @ABurntMuffin balance is also called equilibrioception and it's centrer lies within the inner ear. wiki for more ;)

  • @ABurntMuffin balance is a weird one, its to do with the liquid in our ears so it's by feeling

  • 6TH SENSE ... is the non-sense :>)

  • humor

  • 1:18-1:47 LOL

  • They can't be serious. They are confusing the senses with the stimuli. There are certainly more than 5 senses, we can perceive things through our consciousness as legitimate clairvoyants do but to say that thermoception is a sense is stupid. Thermo i.e. heat is the stimulus and the sense is "touch" which is felt through the nerve endings in the skin. We can't say that it's different because we don't actually touch the heat because we never actually touch anything just the repulsion of electrons.

  • @felixq78 "Touch" is used as an umbrella for a whole load of senses, broadly "stuff we sense through our skin". Off the top of my head, pressure, pain, heat, and cold, but I'm sure there are others. What makes something a sense isn't the organ we feel it with or the stimulus we perceive, but the mechanism by which we perceive it.

    Also, "we can perceive things through our consciousness as legitimate clairvoyants do but to say that thermoception is a sense is stupid." -- Wow.

  • @felixq78

    we can really ? there is no evidence or comments from the scientific community that indicate that clairvoyancy is anything but a sham . you also mention consciousness and perception and your proof for this claim is ??? there are no legitamte clairvoyants , only bullshit .

  • @darkstar1345a Really? Up until recently physicists have discovered our universe is made of at least eleven dimensions (other than the four we're familiar with). Scientist say our brains need "extensions" to comprehend the growing number of higher dimensions. Some infer that they're already there but latent. What if a tiny minority of individuals are born with a mutation that activates those latent parts of the brain? We call them psychics and burn them at the stake! Makes a great sci-fi story.

  • @spacecowboy5000

    yes i am aware of "string theory" wich is interesting if not a little confusing ... but i believe it does state that as you view the other dimensions one by one the more denser they are (for us)... I dont see how that relates to the evidence or supposed evidence of clairvoyancy ? or was it some other theory that you can point me to that has been published ...

  • @darkstar1345a Oh, clairvoyancy is pure rubbish. Reading people's minds, being able to the see the future? More chance of winning the lottery, really. It's all just a less bloody of pagan seers who cut animals open to read the future in their entrails. But if these neurobiologists think there's more to this than good luck to them. Will it open a new eye to the universe? I doubt it. Not even meteorologists can make a 5 day prediction. Still, I intend on pursuing my sci-fi story.

  • Surely pressure and heat etc is just nerve endings?

  • Try saying this in your SCIENCe class. people will laugh at you.

    Cuz everyone "was learnt" there were 5. isnt that the fucking definition of DOGMATIC? Dont ever preach the truth. it will leave you traumatic bully memories.

    Dont ever preach ABOUT truth. Or ull end up like john lennon or gandhi.

  • Feeling as a sense is actually very specific and doesn't cover thermo and pressure, it's just the English language's multitude of meanings for the same word that's confusing. Like the theory of germs causing diseases, which is a well known, tested and proven fact, but the word theory also has meanings that could suggest otherwise.

  • @Dextline I am pretty sure that the correct word would be scientific theory. Theory in itself is like you said, is just a made up logic that you think might work.

  • I would call thermoception and pressure part of feeling.

  • I think those other senses fall under the general scope of 'Feeling': I FEEL cold or hot, I FEEL hungry, I FEEL like I'm tilting slightly towards the left.

  • Wait wait wait... was the question ever answered?

  • @LovetteCher Rememberiception. "Being able to tell whether a question was answered or not."

  • @wordreet

    D:

    Where's my totem?!

  • @LovetteCher Not being Pole-ish I can't tell you. But Steven gave the answer part way through the clip. ;¬)

  • that stuff about the guy that broke his nose is even funnier the second time!

  • blablablabla.. "disapointment" :D

  • "So why did they teach me there was FIVE?" *Serious face*

    Alan gotta love him!!

  • This has got to be one of my favourites. I can imagine myself being the unlucky person who takes their own eye out with their toe. XD

  • @Glitzarr No need to imagine. I have a petrol Flymo that I want to get rid of. You can run it without the cover, and then, although it won't hover, it will take your toe off!

  • @wordreet Oh that's horrible... Make sure you get rid of it before you lose your toe! :S Good job I don't have to do the mowing now we have no grass in our garden. XD

  • @Glitzarr LoL!

  • A sense of decorum.

  • DAMN ADVERTS :P

  • Top quality, BBC!

  • Aristotle was always wrong about everything and that any philosopher takes him at all seriously on any subject tells you all you need to know about philosophers.

    Biologists no longer take Jean-Baptiste Lamarck seriously. Guess why.

  • 367 senses if you count every molecule receptor in the olfactory system. Two kinds of sight (rods and cones), five kinds of taste (sour, salt, sweet, bitter, umami), one acceleration sense (balance), one hearing (only one, sadly), four touches (short, long, hard, soft), two temperature senses (the katie perry song), one limb position sense, one for hunger, one for thist, about eight more unconscious monitoring systems of internal variables such as spinal fluid level, and then all the smells.

  • @Magnetohydrodynamics You forgot good and bad touch.

  • @Magnetohydrodynamics You forgot good and bad touch.

  • These things just allow us to sense our own bodies, though; Aristotle's five senses all relate to the outside world in a way none of the things Fry's mentioned seem to.

  • Isn't it odd that they forgot *common* sense? XD

  • haha, when bill bailey is talking about the hand falling on the blokes nose...I broke a female friend's nose in the exact same way :\

  • @yerok02 Ouch! Is she still a friend? Every time I wake up with what we (Scots, not sure if everyone else does too) call a 'dead arm' I think of this clip. That poor guy losing a toe and an eye. I bet he was English, they do like their sandals, its never dry long enough for Scottish men to wear sandals :-) I bet Pliny the Elder could use the toe + eye as some sort of remedy, shame strimmers weren't around in his day. :-)

  • Q: "How'd the lawn mowing go?" ; A: "Bloody well, can't you see? I certainly can't."

  • What about a sense of Humour

  • I actually got marks in my first semester Anatomy exam at University because of this clip! I couldn't remember what a proprioceptor was and behold, this clip popped into my head! :)

  • @scraper228 Cheers man! I'm having such an exam on december :)

  • @scraper228 hmmmmm

  • @scraper228 That stuff should have been taught to you in High School, not political bullshit kids are fed now in public screwel.

  • @darthspeaks Frankly, what need to children have for knowledge of ALL the senses?! At an age where the toughest decision is "do i have Jelly Babies or Cola Bottles", 5 senses are plenty

  • Allan Davies is cool

  • Fuck youtube ads

  • Try and say that to a mute person. Then it's 8-20.

  • None

  • For all those arguing heatedly, keep this in mind: "There is no firm agreement among neurologists as to the number of senses because of differing definitions of what constitutes a sense"

  • makes you think this...

  • The Anything-Between-the-10th-and-­22nd Sense!

  • Common sense.

  • Sense of occasion?

  • Bill Bailey is a legend.

  • I hated this question before I even heard it, because it only depends on what the question writers decided "senses" meant when they wrote it.

  • Earth , Fire , Wind , Water , Heart.

    With you´r powers combined I am Captain Planet.

    GO PLANET!

  • @xMoac Yea, but as soon as Captain Planet sees some dirt he fucks off and lets the kids do the hard work then comes back at the end and takes the credit. lol

  • @xMoac He said sences, not elements

  • Oh my god, I love Alan Davies :)

  • Are senses INTERNAL as well as EXTERNAL?. I believe that "senses" perceive the external, "feelings" perceive the internal. The classic 5 senses each obtain data from external stimuli, but do we have any other ways of sensing our surroundings? Of the possibilities listed in this clip, nearly all could be classified as either kinds of "touch", or as feelings. But what about balance? Though I believe balance is a "feeling", it is dependent on a sense, our sense of up and down, our sense of gravity.

  • @bolsontheta Yes, there liquid filled cavities in the inner ear that helps the body keep the balance. Heat and cold is also detected by different nerves than touch. The brain also "remembers" how it told different muscles to move, which gives ut our sense of body self-awareness. So they're right, there's more than five senses, with the definition that senses is what gives us feedback from our surroundings like Fry said in the video).

  • @bolsontheta I don't think you could call hunger a "feeling".

  • @gilli39 Of course it is. Just like stephen said, it's all just feedback... our stomachs tell us when we are hungry and when we arent, just like we know if somethings hot or cold

  • @gilli39 yes hunger is a feeling. Coz if u wanted food you'd be feeling hungry. Your stomach sends a message to ur brain for more food

  • @Cena7ah1 Reverse order

  • @musicownage2 it's not

  • @Cena7ah1 So it isn't, my bad

  • @bolsontheta I'm not arguing just debating. What about heat? We feel heat both internally: if we have a temp or have been exercising,It's not just a perception. We also feel it externally via touch,I think its a moot point to try and define the difference between perception and feeling. Perception suggests its arguable and variable amongst others, ie 1 man's hot is another man's warm but the man feelling heat will have reactions such a sweat, rtgo its real suggesting its more than perception.

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  • @krizan1 lmao

  • ok those "senses" are external senses the ones rapist glasses are talking about are internal senses.

  • i knew that...

    because i read the Qi book XD

  • Aristotle forgot HEART!

  • @TGGeko with our powers combined!

  • 0:42 The look on Alan's face? Priceless! And why do I find him somewhat attractive? Gah. ;)

  • Loved both the injury stories.

  • ITS eat of the fruit.who wouldent be tempted.senseless...me...ducci­o di buoninsegna = the rucellai madonna...look at the angels...whisper and listen for a reply...which is which?or christs lamentaion on the cross...if that means nothing to you then youve never lived...or the deposition , or the descent from the cross- rogier van der weyden...the lady in green sinlesss and free...so alive.

  • The only sense I find useful is the Common one.

  • @Alixbox1723 sadly that is considered a super sense these days... as is a Sense of decorum.

  • @eleriel A sense many people are sadly lacking. I'm no racist so I won't say entire nations lack it, but my perception is that 1 or 2 nations, 1 a close UK neighbour, the other a mere ocean away, share a propensity to demonstrate a lack of decorum. I'm of course joking + mean no offence. I was going to say ' You know who you are!'.However I fear they have no idea but who am I to judge. I'm just enjoying a comedy programme that generates cerebral agility in me. :-)

  • I experience a sense of shame....frequently. :`(

  • oh no wait... i have 15.....intuition.

  • @QuirkyGirl12345 Echolocation is really more a matter of hearing and interpretation of what you hear than an independent sense, or so I'm given to understand.

  • @HermogenesZither aw...... yeah okay I'll give you that! I can see what you mean, because it is more a hightened sense than an individual sense.

    damn. now i only have 14 again

  • I have 14 senses. Sight, Hearing, Taste, Touch, Smell, Thought(brain activity), Pain, Pressure, Temperature(heat), Balance, Kinesthetic(position of body), Direction(movement), Presence(energy), and Echolocation(sonar).

    Take that primary school education!

  • This show is good on so many fucking levels. And I'd rather have Bill Bailey running the home country rather than any of the three guys who were said to be in with a shot.

  • haha i love bill bailey (:

  • Stephen is just incredible :)

  • hahaha the toe and eye bit rofl what are the fucking chances lol

  • There are 5 BASIC human senses. There are many more than 5 human senses in total, not counting the ones we do not have yet due to our limited physiology. Consider Electroreception, the ability to detect electric fields some fish are endowed with...might one day be a 'human' sense. you could argue that it is an extension or variation of 'touch'. Fair enough, but under further scrutiny you see many divisions amongst the BASIC 5.

  • @MindfulFuture what the hell are you talking about?

    take thermoception as an example, yes it happens over your skin but you dn't have to touch the hot thing to know, that it is hot.

    and if you insist on talking about basic senses, why not reduce them to 4? smell and tast are closely linked together.

    and what does basic senses mean anyways? Those five beeing most obvious, doesn't mean they are any more or less essential than the other ones.

  • @Zhero4 Why 'dumb down' the facts? One of my points was that our senses are limited, and that they may be expanded on in the future by technological enhancements. Relax, man.