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Feeling Nosy
26 March 2013

Feeling Nosy

Take a moment to close your eyes and go for a short walk around the room, notice how reliant you become on your sense of touch. Now imagine living in the darkness underground, how much better would your sense of touch need to be? Enter the star-nosed mole, so called for its unusual feeler-adorned nose (this electron micrograph shows four of the 22 tentacle-like feelers). The nose is only one centimetre across but is covered with tens of thousands of highly sensitive, domed, touch organs called Eimer's organs. A pinhead could touch 600 of these at once, that’s fifteen times more sensitive than the human hand. Using the star-nosed mole as a model organism, scientists can get one step closer to discovering the mechanisms of touch and an understanding of sensory loss in humans.

Written by Mary-Clare Hallsworth

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BPoD stands for Biomedical Picture of the Day. Managed by the MRC Laboratory of Medical Sciences until Jul 2023, it is now run independently by a dedicated team of scientists and writers. The website aims to engage everyone, young and old, in the wonders of biology, and its influence on medicine. The ever-growing archive of more than 4000 research images documents over a decade of progress. Explore the collection and see what you discover. Images are kindly provided for inclusion on this website through the generosity of scientists across the globe.

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