Senses in the human animal?

That is our conventional way of thinking about the senses.

There are many human abilities we do not understand. Scientific knowledge will advance further, and some day people will know more about human capabilities. What some skeptics today call myth or irrelevant anecdotal evidence or even lies will be explained.

All living creatures can sense and feel sources of energy. What animals can and can not see is still science and research. We know dogs have a keen sense of smell and hearing, but have no idea what they can and can not actually see. Cats have a totally different type of vision that may or may not allow it to see Spirits. For humans a Ghost experience would definitely be a rare and unusual experience that would be astronomically low in numbers world wide. There are a lot of variables and factors that need to be taken into consideration. The other issue that is very real, is this is all assumptions, speculations and theories people make and create. There is no way to prove Paranormal because there are no proven hard facts that are beyond a question of doubt. 3AM is the most highly reported time that people claim to see the paranormal. Low level sound and noise frequencies can travel all the way around the earth without loosing the frequency and you could be hearing things that aren't even in the home. Our ears can not distinguish exactly where a sound is coming from.

I 'd like to see an answer from a Zoologist to this question.

Not being a scientist, I can only speculate from observation.

I'm not sure fish for example have different senses. They have an organ called the lateral line. It detects vibrations around them helping them find and avoid being a meal. Is that a different sense, or a biologically different way of processing information.

Cats have a jacobs organ. They get information by doing an open mouthed movement resembling a yawn.

Maybe birds detecting magnetic fields is a refined sense of touch or hearing.

The sense of time comes from experience and an unconscious processing of information. Another one is a sense of direction. Some of us can almost always sense what direction we're driving or walking in. Put us in a dark forest and take away landmarks and it's not so good. The sensory imput to make directional observations is not there

I think our senses like everything else about us is limited by our biology. No matter how much we want to fly, we don't have wings.

Empirical implies finding results using the scientific method which involves using the defined senses of the human. Sight.taste.touch,smell.hearing. The extra senses humans present are not so easily re created for a scientific scrutiny. How can one prove they had an out of body experience? How can one prove that they seen a ghost? Or felt the presence of one? One must be able to recreate the event in order to prove to others that one thing or another is true,or valid. Brain waves are manipulated in the laboratory with predictable out comes. Changes in thought and feelings can be perceived by the subject. Brain technology is the thing that would cover the extra senses in science.

The 5 senses are an Aristotleian thing apparently.

Proprioception is usually considered the 6th sense. Circadian rhythms sense time, which isn't really a stimulus, or a form of physical energy, but a more fundamental quality.

And touch includes the sense of heat, pain, movement, and even hearing if you think about it. Intuition doesn't actually exist, any more than Spidey-Sense does!

So, it's an old convention. We certainly are sensitive to pressure. I put that under the umbrella of touch and/or hearing.

BUT, if we were sensitive to things like electricity, magnetism or others, it seems likely we would know about it, since we are cognizant, and the whole point of sense is to relay information from the outside world to our brains.

with animals, well really with very living thing on the planet, info gets passed on to there babies, like human babies know how to swim when put in water.. also fish have lived in the water for million of years so they know pressure and current b/c if they didn't they couldn't live there.. you see what I'm saying.. if you blinded fold someone for two weeks there brain will have re-wire its self in about 4 days, so that the part that was use to help you see how helps with hearing, touch etc.. but it will re-wire its self back, in about little over a hour,, after the blind fold is off.. animals in the wild use there 5 senses, but their 5 senses are way better then our own.. does that help with it..

The 5 human senses are those which we use to interact with our environment. This is a key distinction because an animal's survival depends entirely on how well it can interact with its environment. They are not intuitive senses, but rather physical.

The sense of passing of time, like a sense of humor, a sense of literacy, a sense of recognition, etc. are functions of the brain. I am not sure how one would control for such things or even why such things would need to be controlled for.

Yeah I think it can be argued that people have senses other than the big five like knowing where you limbs are positioned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception

We have only evolved to have the senses that we need, like bats can fly around in the dark catching insects, we don't need to be able to do that stuff.

I don't think that this thought path leads leads you to conclude that paranormal senses have any validity though.

Tunsa...you're much smarter about these things than I am...but I think a lot of the reason that we don't have these senses is because we don't have the time to develop them or have a great need for them....and that we aren't aware of them if we do have them. Doesn't it have a lot to do with adaptation to our environment? Just guessing.

I've wondered for years about this, and I know we humans also possess a sense of balance, appetite, co-ordination (muscle memory), and intuition, which is sometimes called the '6th' sense. Please add to this list...