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[–] 143 points 1 year ago (18 children)

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

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  • [–] 71 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    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

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year 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

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (9 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (7 children)

    I think you might be onto something.

    I have no idea how dick would feel on my tongue, because I've never had one on my tongue.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Interesting. Yes.

    If you feel this as a loss, I'm sure that if you let this be known widely enough in your friend group, someone will offer to help you out with the missing sensory data.

    And if not, there's definitely an app for that. Just put that on your profile.

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