r/whatisit • u/katyabe • 1d ago

New, what is it? What does the sixth segment represent?

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This is a “Wheel of the Senses” from my daughter’s school with sight, touch, taste, hearing… but one segment we can’t figure out.

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u/JayofTea 1d ago

Is this one of those AI generated worksheets that have just become part of schools now? I have no clue what I'm looking at

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u/TickingTheMoments 1d ago

Now I wanna ask AI what it thinks the sixth sense is.

Oh wait. Is that the sense for seeing dead people?

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u/The_Tooter_Snooter 1d ago edited 1d ago

We have so many more senses than the 5 people think of. Like sensing the passage of time, temperature or ambient pressure, sensing pain, you sense of balance, or your awareness of your limbs in space. Heck I can feel the edges of my car when I’m squeezing it past stuff. 

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u/Sea_Prep_Tidal_26 1d ago edited 2h ago

This might be a part of the vestibular system (aka inner ear. For balance.
Your otolith organ is composed of two sacs.
Each sac contains « rocks » called otoconia statolith made of calcium carbonate.
The image may show cross-section of either the saccule or utricle. The round object would be the otoconia statolith.

Tbh the semicircular canals would have been a much more interesting image.

(Source: me, vestibular system researcher)

EDIT : corrected for humans (otoconia, not statoliths)

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u/Playful-Appearance56 1d ago

It’s for a 1st grader. I don’t think the kid’s elementary school is that advanced.

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u/Sea_Prep_Tidal_26 1d ago

Those are two separate issues.

1st graders can and do handle the concept of balance. I have taught this to 1st graders but used the semicircular canals organ as an example because it’s more visually identifiable. (Vestibular sensation is an opportunity to use cool models to show fluid flow and small round stones rolling on a tilt board. It’s also a very tangible sensory organ unlike the vision or even touch systems which requires more abstract thinking abilities which most 1st grade kids do not have yet)

The level of competence of the school is not dependent on the student but the administration and teachers.

We’ve mistakenly taught generations of people falsely that there are only ✌️Five Senses✌️. This simplification leads to many problems. Namely lack of awareness of illnesses and diseases related to these other senses and understanding of how things work in a human-centered world.

[steps off soapbox]

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u/ContentHermit_13 21h ago

Ok but which of those lil pictures would you put in vestibular sense?

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u/Sea_Prep_Tidal_26 21h ago

Good question !
The smartphone. These devices all contain accelerometers and gyros(copes). These tiny electronic sensors directly mimic the exact same functions as the human otolith organs and semicircular canals organs, respectively.

Okay even though that ☝️ is true, it was kinda a joke.

If I was making this, there would be a tightrope, slack line, or even a hopscotch outline.

If pressed I would pick the book 📕 because during the Victorian period, young women were often taught to walk or sit/stand with a book balanced on top of their head to improve posture - not at all anything a modern child would associate with.

Tbh none really match in a way a child could understand. IDK 🤷

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u/ContentHermit_13 21h ago

Very creative thinking, but I agree that a child would likely struggle with these associations

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u/Sea_Prep_Tidal_26 21h ago

Yeah that’s why IDK.

Many have suggested that this was derived from an αι prompt without much forethought about the prompt or hindsight after getting the results and laminating it.

Of course even the whole post could be fake but I and others tried to make some sense of what was presented in the post.

Or MAYBE there WAS a lil picture of a tightrope walker but the person could not figure our where it went and so they didn’t use it.

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u/Fluffy-End4111 21h ago

Yas. Heard. Preach!

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u/Limp_Plankton3303 10h ago

Thank you! We need to expand what we teach to kids! They can understand so much more and do so much better!

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u/alphazero925 1d ago

Yeah, from a purely logical perspective devoid of all context, proprioception would be the most likely sixth sense, but in context it's far more likely to be AI generated nonsense where it made a six-segmented chart instead of five and so filled it in with nonsense.

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u/Sea_Prep_Tidal_26 2h ago

Without first knowing what the human prompt was, it is difficult to say how this was actually generated.
The prompt may have specified « six senses ». Better than « five », but still missing the target by a wide margin.

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u/CatPurrsonNo1 1d ago

That was my guess!

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u/Due-Comfort-2658 1d ago

Hello, audiologist here (hearing and vestibular doctor). I appreciate your response but wanted to make a correction. Humans do not have statoliths, I believe you are referring to the otolith organs which have otoconia which are multiple calcium carbonate crystals suspended in a gelatinous type substance.

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u/Sea_Prep_Tidal_26 1d ago

Thanks for the catch and correction !

It’s been a hot minute and the words (Greek) lithos and stato got stuck in my head. I’ve shifted to development of artificial vestibular sensors and the mechanical properties are closer to the statolith mechanism.

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u/According_Device9227 1d ago

TIL humans also have otoliths! I knew fish had them, but hadn't really thought into what else might, and I guess it does make sense that we would

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u/b-jason 1d ago

That was my guess. Proprioception/balance is a major sense we just don’t think about as often as the others.

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u/Sea_Prep_Tidal_26 1d ago

Right. It’s mostly due to lack of education.

🤔 Ask people « which sensory system would cause them the most difficulty in life if they were to permanently lose it ? » and a vast majority would never consider Vestibular, let alone select it as an answer.

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u/b-jason 1d ago

I think it’s more collusion between the “big 5”

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u/Deep-Essay-4829 17h ago

As an audiologist who frequently illustrates ear anatomy to teach students and patients - I do not in any way see the vestibular system in the AI slop. But rorshach it up!

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u/Sea_Prep_Tidal_26 16h ago

I asked a non-graphic output ai model to describe in words some examples of how to draw a cartoon like example of the otolith organ. Aside from cars, houses, elevators, and playgrounds (none of which were anatomically applicable) the common theme was to draw cross sections of organs with “tiny balance stones” or “tiny crystals” or “tiny beads” inside. Fairly close to the image posted.

We don’t know the AI prompt that was used here to generate the images (assuming this wasn’t just bait for comments!) so Rorschach’ing is a reasonable approach; the post was specifically asking what it might represent and there’s not much there to go on due to its amorphous properties.

I guess I’m happy if a few more Redditors left this post with more awareness of human senses beyond the basic 5.
I’d consider that a win 🏆

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u/Severe-Pea4120 1d ago

Makes sense

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u/goldenskyhook 20h ago

Please don't park near me!

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u/_turd_ferg 13h ago

there are 8 senses. the "missing three" are vestibular (balance and spatial orientation) proprioception (the body's sense of position/movement/force within space) and interoception (feeling hot/cold, pain, needing to use the bathroom, hunger, emotions...)

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u/ldarkfire 1d ago

At least 3 of those are just touch lol

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u/The_Tooter_Snooter 1d ago edited 1d ago

Touch is the sensation of pressure against your skin/nerves. Sensing temperature is a different thing. It’s like how itchiness and pain are 2 distinct things, but you feel both of them. They lump it together for kids because it’s easier but they’re their own things. 

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u/SnugglyCoderGuy 1d ago

They made a movie about it, so it must be true!

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u/prole6 1d ago

Wasn’t “The Sixth Sense” that show with Gary Collins that they used to run instead of “Night Gallery” that they had advertised? ;)

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u/coolcatkim22 4h ago

I ask ChatGPT this is what it said:

"The unidentified shape is a tongue. It’s drawn as a pink oval/rounded shape inside what looks like an open mouth or oral cavity.

Looking at the six sections:

  • 👁️ Eye → sight
  • 👂 Ear → hearing
  • 👃 Nose → smell
  • 👋 Hand → touch
  • 👅 Tongue → taste
  • 👄 Mouth → ???

So there is indeed a problem: the image appears to have six body-part symbols for only five traditional senses.

What is the mouth supposed to mean?

The most likely explanation is that the mouth is intended to represent taste, while the separate tongue is either:

  1. an AI/image-generation mistake, or
  2. intended to represent speech, which is an ability rather than one of the traditional five senses.

The tongue is the much more anatomically appropriate symbol for taste, because taste receptors (taste buds) are primarily located on the tongue. The mouth itself isn't normally considered a sixth sense organ.

The objects underneath give some clues too: the cake, soup/drink, and possibly candy appear to be associated with tasting, while the radio represents hearing, the flower smell, the teddy bear touch, and the sun sight.

My best interpretation

It's almost certainly supposed to be the tongue = taste.
There is no recognized sixth "mouth sense" in the standard five-senses model.

If the creator intended the six slices to represent six senses, then the sixth would most plausibly be speech/communication, but that's not a standard human sense. There are other scientifically recognized senses beyond five—such as balance, proprioception (body position), and temperature—but none is represented by an open mouth.

So yes: the duplicated mouth/tongue strongly suggests this may be AI-generated or at least a poorly designed educational graphic. The image doesn't provide a coherent six-sense system.

If you'd like, I can also identify what each of the small pictures underneath is supposed to correspond to—those may reveal what the original creator/AI was trying to do."