Senses questions

Ageusia is the loss of taste functions of the tongue. It is sometimes confused with anosmia – a loss of the sense of smell. Because the tongue can only indicate texture and differentiate between sweet, sour, bitter, salty, and umami, most of what is perceived as the sense of taste is actually derived from smell.

Skin contains many sensory receptors. Pacinian corpuscles are the most obvious as they form large (~ 1 mm), onion-like structures in the dermis and hypodermis. Pacinian corpuscles are sensitive to mechanical and vibratory pressure. They are distributed on various areas of the skin, but concentrated in areas especially sensitive to light touch, such as the fingers and lips.

The area of nasal mucous membrane in a bear's head is 7 times greater than a bloodhound's (and one hundred times larger than in a human's). Polar bears have been seen to march up to 40 miles in a straight line to reach a prey animal they have detected.