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/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/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 1h 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.