Part of ScienceSenses
Save to My Bitesize
In this video, learn about the human tongue and taste buds and how they work with our sense of smell to help us detect taste.
This video can not be played
Find out how taste buds and our sense of smell work together to tell us what we're eating.
Right then children. We鈥檙e here at the doctor鈥檚 to take a good look at a human tongue, so stay close please and try not to get swallowed.
Now the tongue is actually a muscle, and its surface can detect all sorts of different tastes, temperatures and textures.
The tongue is covered in lots of little bumps. On the walls and grooves of these bumps are thousands of tiny taste buds, too small for the human eye to see.
The buds sense the taste of everything they come into contact with. This taste information gets turned into signals that get sent to the brain, telling it what kind of food is being eaten and whether it鈥檚 safe to eat.
There are five main tastes that the tongue can pick out: sweet, sour, savoury, salty and bitter.
All five tastes can be detected on every part of the tongue, although the sides are usually more sensitive than the middle.
There are different types of taste buds. Some respond only to one taste. These signal to the brain how strong that taste is. Other buds can sense all of the tastes. The brain is told how much there is of each taste and builds up an overall idea of the flavour of the food being eaten.
A human鈥檚 sense of taste doesn鈥檛 just rely on the tongue. It has a lot to do with the nose as well, which senses the smell of different foods before and while they鈥檙e being eaten.
So, if a human has a blocked nose due to a bad cold, it doesn鈥檛 matter how sensitive the taste buds are, they鈥檒l find it difficult to taste what they鈥檙e eating.
Well, we better leave the doctor to it. This human doesn鈥檛 look all that well鈥
COUGHING
Oh, charming!
Tongue - Muscle in the mouth that is used for taste, moving food around and speaking
Taste bud - A group of cells on the tongue or round the mouth that detect taste
Taste - How we sense the flavour of something in our mouths. There are five main tastes:
Find out more by working through a topic
Video playlist
How does the human eye work?
How do humans hear?
How does human touch work?