So, um...
So, um... (scuffs toe in dust) ...
for the last week or so, whenever I put my finger into my left ear (like, as in, to scratch an itch, which is how I initially discovered it), I get a powerful bright metallic taste in my mouth.
And it, uh, goes away, when I take my finger out of my ear.
I just, uh, though I'd share that with you. For the sake of science. Y'know.
ronnie
posted by ronnie at
9:55 p.m.
2 Comments:
Careful with the curling iron, then, girl. We don't want yez burnin' yer tongue, eh? -- Mike
There is a very good explanation for the funny taste you get while probing your ear: it goes back to our fishy ancestry when we all had gills.
The three bones in the middle ear cavity were originally part of a bony arch reinforcing one of the gill-slits, just as the mandible and upper jaw formed part of another gill-arch. Associated with each of these arches was a nerve, still in existence but now serving a slightly different purpose. Several of these nerves connected with the tongue, carrying taste-messages.
When the architecture of hearing and chewing was rearranged, as it is in mammals including us, one tiny taste nerve, the Chorda tympani, was left stranded so that it had to pass across the eardrum, pass out through a hole in the temporal bone and into the tongue, where it mediates taste along the edge of the tongue. So when you poke your ear, it irritates the chorda tympani, sending a false signal to your brain. Don't tell the Creationists about this though.
aj
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