8 Popular 'Science Myths' Where The Truth Is Way Cooler

5. We Only Have Five Senses

If someone tells you that they have a sixth sense, the correct response should really be, "Only six?"

Sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch were first itemised by Aristotle himself. This should have set off warning bells in the first place, seeing as Aristotle, much like Gwyneth Paltrow, is wrong about almost everything.

Whilst these five are broadly speaking how we consciously experience the world, we're actually a lot more perceptive than we give ourselves credit for. Our ability to balance (equilibrioception), our ability to sense where our limbs are (proprioception), our experience of hunger and thirst, our sense of time and our sense of direction are all senses that we have in addition to the big five. Many experts also think that the sensations of pain and itching are distinct from our sense of touch.

So, depending on who you talk to, humans have anywhere between 11 and 20 senses, which is far more than any superhero we've come up with thus far.