Which of the traditional Five Senses would you rather lose?

Hobbes

Hobbes

Tucayo
Retired Wiki Staff
'Shroom Consultant
MarioWiki
Henry Tucayo Clay
I was having this argument with my friends the other day and my first answer was smell, but then I realized losing your sense of smell would greatly hinder your sense of taste and can even be dangerous (you can't smell a gas leak, for example), among other unpleasant consequences.

I would go with taste; I love food but I love my other senses more (except smell, tbh, but I'd rather lose one sense than one and three quarters) and losing your sense of taste won't likely pose a danger for you: if something's rotten, you'll smell it anyway.


(I hope this thread is not insensitive towards people who have actually lost one of these senses. If it is, please lock it).
 
Hard to decide, but I think I'd go for smell and probably make it up by making foods taste extra strong or something. If something is rotten, I use three senses: smell, taste, and sight.
 
sight is the absolute worst one to lose imo

out of all of these, i can lose smell, unless if it's also linked to taste
 
definitely smell for me, since it would be really hard to live blind, deaf or numb


since the topic's come up and no one asked, I usually consider smell and taste to be the same general thing, and sub in thought as the other fifth sense
 
That was my thinking as well, losing smell first, but there's this:

http://www.masseyeandear.org/for-patients/patient-guide/patient-education/diseases-and-conditions/smell-and-taste-disorders/taste-disorders said:
We can commonly identify at least five different taste sensations: sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami (the taste elicited by glutamate, which is found in chicken broth, meat extracts, and some cheeses). In the mouth, these tastes, along with texture, temperature, and the sensations from the common chemical sense, combine with odors to produce a perception of flavor. It is flavor that lets us know whether we are eating a pear or an apple. Some people are surprised to learn that flavors are recognized mainly through the sense of smell. If you hold your nose while eating chocolate, for example, you will have trouble identifying the chocolate flavor -- even though you can distinguish the food's sweetness or bitterness. That is because the distinguishing characteristic of chocolate, for example, what differentiates it from caramel, is sensed largely by its odor.
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well that's why i asked that if we were to lose smell, would we lose taste as well? because that means we lose both if we had to forfeit one, essentially.
 
I'm not an expert but, as Toadbert said, they go with each other. The sense of taste only provides half of the actual taste and the other half is provided by the smell.
 
As much I'd hate it, probably taste as Tucky said.

If we were to include the other recognized senses (balance and acceleration, pain, body and limb postion, and relative temperature), I'd still pick taste.