• davidgro@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    The unfortunate answer is that it knows through long forgotten experience… Anything a toddler sees goes in the mouth.

    • Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works
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      18 hours ago

      I’m pretty sure it’s my brain extrapolating from that baby experience and combining it with finger sensations. I didn’t have the opportunity to lick a basketball or (US) football but my tongue can surmise the difference in the bumps because my fingers know.

      • kautau@lemmy.world
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        14 minutes ago

        Yeah weirdly (or maybe not) when we get down to it too, every sense is a sense of touch. Your ears touch the vibrations in the air, your nose touches the particles in the air, your eyes feel the touch of the light that hits them, skin is self explanatory, and then your tongue, which is touching on a very miniscule level while checking for all the chemicals and seeing if your nose is confirming that the touch is similar to the particles

        • scarilog@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          Disagree on eyes. Light is EM radiation, not a mechanical wave like sound. Your retina isn’t ‘touching’ anything but the vitreous.

          • kautau@lemmy.world
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            5 hours ago

            Though isn’t it a stream of photons that hit the photoreceptors? So not touch in the mechanical sense, but things are still “touching” in the colliquial sense, like a very minute and specialized version of smell

    • LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      Some toddlers have helicopter parents who never let them put anything in their mouth. Will they be stunted in their growth and development and sensory skills?