If you have a new account but are having problems posting or verifying your account, please email us on hello@boards.ie for help. Thanks :)

Hello all! Please ensure that you are posting a new thread or question in the appropriate forum. The Feedback forum is overwhelmed with questions that are having to be moved elsewhere. If you need help to verify your account contact hello@boards.ie

Allergies and the Senses

Aswerty · 2012-05-06 20:18:12

So someone was asking me about my hay-fever the other day and at one point I described it as being able to sense the concentration of the pollen in the air by how irritated my nose gets. This lead to discussing how people with allergies could in someway be considered to have extra senses albeit there is typically a greater…

Options

06-05-2012 9:18pm

#1

Aswerty

Registered Users Posts: 586 ✭✭✭

Join Date: September 2010

Posts: 568

So someone was asking me about my hay-fever the other day and at one point I described it as being able to sense the concentration of the pollen in the air by how irritated my nose gets. This lead to discussing how people with allergies could in someway be considered to have extra senses albeit there is typically a greater downside than upside to this sense.

So what I was wondering is there a connection between what we would consider allergies with the evolution of the senses? I've heard Dawkins describe how the eye could have started to develop through mutations that caused primitive sea creatures to have sensitivity to light that allowed them to detect overhead predators. This mutation for me sounds as if the creature could have had an allergy to light which had a net positive effect. A quick Google hasn't provided me with any information on this query so boards was my next stop.

1