Paragraph on “How do we taste and smell?” complete paragraph for Class 9, Class 10, Class 11 and Class 12

How do we taste and smell?

Taste is sometimes confused with smell. It is easy to mistake a smell for a taste. An onion, for example, has no taste. Anyone with a heavy cold may complain of losing his taste, when , in fact, he has lost his smell.

Quite what sort of smell or taste  we get from anything depends upon its physical and chemical properties. So before we know what the smell or taste is like, some small amount of sensory receptors- the nerve cells which will give the brain its message.

The human tongue has about 3,000 taste buds to distinguish one taste from another. The four basic tastes- sweet, sour, salt and bitter- are detected by different parts of the  tongue. The taste buds are connected to a nerve which takes ‘ taste’ messages to the brain.

Smell is detected by the nose. Nerve cells that deal with smell (the olfactory nerve  cells) are on the upper and inner surface of the nose. There are long. Hair-like lashes at the lower end of these cells which are covered by a layer of mucous. The minute particles of a substance, which we have already mentioned, must be dissolved in the layer of mucous before the nerve cells can detect them.

The olfactory nerves are connected to the olfactory bulb. Here, there are more nerve cells to transmit ‘ smell’ messages to the brain.