right? Like if you lose your hearing, your sense of taste should be heightened, right?

Maybe not.

• RE: If you lose one sense, your other senses become stronger,,Starshine, 09:41 AM, 03-29-11
  • RE: If you lose one sense, your other senses become stronger,,dabo, 10:54 AM, 03-29-11
  • RE: If you lose one sense, your other senses become stronger,,PepeLePew13, 06:28 PM, 03-29-11
    • RE: If you lose one sense, your other senses become stronger,,Snidget, 07:29 PM, 03-29-11
• RE: If you lose one sense, your other senses become stronger,,Molaholic, 01:51 PM, 04-06-11
  • RE: If you lose one sense, your other senses become stronger,,Belle Book, 04:37 PM, 04-06-11
  • RE: If you lose one sense, your other senses become stronger,,PepeLePew13, 06:28 AM, 04-07-11
    • RE: If you lose one sense, your other senses become stronger,,Starshine, 07:16 AM, 04-07-11

I don't understand.

I think the theory is that when one loses one sense one uses the others more intensely to help out, so if one cannot hear it could be possible that ones sight improves, or rather one notices things that other people don't in order to be able to catch things that hearing people would catch by sound.

I can't really see how taste would help someone who cannot hear.

Pepe, what do you think?

Lose the use of your legs you become more dependant on your arms and your arms become stronger, you are using them more, but this is simply muscle development and conditioning. If you have bad eyes you compensate by learning to process what visual input you receive, for instance if you lack depth perception you learn to process depth more through geometric relations. This is cerebral awareness. Lose your sight entirely, go blind, you become more dependant on your other senses, use your hearing more for spatial relations (which you already do anyway), but it is still a matter of cerebral awareness not muscle development. Losing one sense doesn't improve the other senses, it increases dependance upon them. In a sense you just see things differently. Hope that helps.

I'll echo what dabo said.

Eyesight or other senses do not improve when you're missing something such as the ability to hear -- you do find ways to compensate for any gaps and you do learn to pick up things in other ways that the average person might not, which is equally true for each sense or limb lost. Lose an arm? Find a way to get up or do things with one arm instead of two. Can't hear? Use eyes to pick up clues as to what's around you instead of depending on your ears to pick up sounds to avoid getting run over. Can't taste? Read up on literature to tell you which foods are poisonous or will scorch your tongue. And so on...

It's a survival instinct that we all have when faced with a barrier or situation out of the norm. Think of the folks from the movie, "Alive" or Aron Ralston in "127 Hours" ... none of us would seriously think of cutting off an arm or eating another human being, but when your back is completely against the wall with no other options, you'll find a way to survive.

So... no, Luke being unable to hear would have absolutely zero impact on his being able (unable) to detect different flavours of tea. Visually, perhaps, if he was able to recall the specific shade of colour of the tea, but if he didn't take note of the colour back in China, he would have been equally SOL as everyone else upon arriving in India hours later.

We had a Deaf Awareness Day (in addition to other awareness days) in our community a few years ago where various local VIPs were invited to wear a pair of earplugs and spend a few hours out in the community without depending on their ears. We almost made the news in a negative manner in a big way - the most well-known city councillor was inches away from being crushed by a bus because she didn't hear it coming and wasn't used to having to look around at all times. Most people take their five senses for granted, so when one is gone all of a sudden, they don't know how to react initially but will eventually learn to survive without it.

Try picking up the symbols with your eyes closed the next time you see a braille sign. You can't tell the difference between each letter at first. But when your survival depends on it, you'll find out how quickly you pick up on it and be able to 'read' things and move around without the use of eyes.

And I think which senses you learn to rely on or cope with depends to some extent on the person.

Some people have more sensitive taste buds to start with, but that doesn't help much when trying to tell if a bus is coming. You don't go from having normal taste to a "super-taster" from losing another sense.

I know from some research projects I've been on when I use a particular sense in a new way over time it can be more acute for that particular application. So I suspect that it would be the same with losing a sense, it doesn't cause all the others to amplify equally, but the ones you start depending on and using more become stronger with use.

I still worry a mockingbird is out to kill the blind by where I worked. The pedestrian walk way chirps when it stops traffic and one of the mockingbirds was duplicating the chirp so exactly I even stepped off the curb a few times and I could see that the light hadn't changed.

I agree - it isn't the lose of the sense that improves the acuity of the others -- it's the added use or importance that builds 'strength'. Wine/tea connoisseurs can detect minuet differences in taste, artists see color changes, woodworkers can feel a millimeter sized scratch because of experience and training.

Luke got caught in a dirty trick -- a crucial piece of information was presented as just another hum-drum thing to do and move on. He got frustrated, had some horrible luck, and had to endure. He did.

And artists of any stripe can see patterns -- ask Alex from Estee's Survivor fanfic, who solved many puzzles because she was a cartoonist and hence an artist.

Incidentally, all the Racers who did the Roadblock had the same problem inasmuch as they too had a crucial piece of information presented as just another hum-drum thing to do. But Ron was smart enough to start sniffing the tea before tasting it, and two other people did the same thing, at least.

This is going to change how future participants prepare during the race - a smart team is going to be writing everything down that happens along the way that is related to a stop along the way as told by a clue, no matter how minor it may seem. Big thick notebooks and several pens are going to become de rigueur from here on.

Just like the Mole!

Imagine though, Amanda and Kris run to the finish line, there aren't any of the other final three teams there, everyone is cheering, Phil says "Over 40,000 miles, 14 countries, you are the first team to arrive at the final pitstop, However, before I can check you in... What was the flavour of that tea you drank in China?"

Four years later Myrna and Charla stroll in to take the win