Tactileity?

Settle down and pay attention everyone. Today we shall consider the meaning of the word "tactile" and how it appertains to our body.

Tactile means "of or connected with the sense of touch." We have different senses like sight, smell, hearing, taste, spatial orientation (parking a car), and of course touch. What we don't seem to have much of these days is common sense. It is not as common as one would imagine.

But let's concentrate on touch; hence the word tactile.

Our bodies have different parts with different nerve endings to enable us to feel sensitivity to a greater or lesser degree. This means some parts of our bodies feel more than others. The tips of our fingers for instance. Did you know that the tips of our fingers can feel or identify a feeling smaller than one grain of sand. If you close your eyes and run your finger gently on a smooth surface you could feel and notice when you have touched something as small or even smaller than a grain of sand.

The tips of the finger can also identify whether something is wet or dry, sticky like glue or honey, smooth or sharp, and even temperature. However, that being said, it has always been traditional in some people to test the baby's bath water temperature by dipping the elbow in the water. 

It is believed, (scientifically debatable), that the elbow is much more sensitive to temperature than running your hand or fingers in the bath water. Some people prefer to test the bath water with their ears but this is also not scientifically proven either. What has been proven though is that testing the water with your nose is liable to make you choke if you accidentally breathe in some of the water. 

The tongue is also very tactile and sensitive. This has been proven by giving blind-folded people a piece of plastic sheet with different holes in them. Some holes were square, others round, triangular or rectangular. People were asked to identify the shapes with the tip of their fingers or with the tip of their tongue. More often than not the feeling from the tongue was more accurate. 

The skin, which is an organ in itself covering the whole body, is sensitive to a greater or lesser degree in different parts of the body. For example, try sitting on a hedgehog or cactus and see how that feels.

Different stimuli can affect our sense of feeling. I like that song:

Feelings, nothing more than feelings,
Trying to forget my feelings of love.
Feelings, wo-o-o feelings,
Wo-o-o, feel you again in my arms.

Sorry ... got distracted there for a while. Where was I? Yes, different stimuli, like alcohol, could make you lose all feelings and even make you say something to your wife which results in the silent treatment and sleeping on the couch. Also, some stimuli can make you liable to outbursts of swearing and profanities as I found out this morning when I missed the nail and hit my hand hard with a hammer.

 

Finally, on the subject of tactile body parts we turn our attention to feet, or more precisely to toes. We all know how it feels if the shoe is too tight, or when we stub our toes against something hard or walk on a Lego brick. However, did you know that your toes can also tell you when you have walked on a hot piece of coal from the barbecue which has been accidentally dropped on the ground?

 

So there you have it ... different parts of the body can identify different levels of feelings, some pleasurable, and some not so.