The first offense was a Daily Mail article from 2013 on the study that came out that same year identifying that testicles have taste receptors. Of course, the nuances of the above were lost to some laymen. In the lungs and nose, there is evidence that they are involved in regulating inflammatory responses.” Those in the testicles help with sperm production, and mice that are genetically altered to not have two types of taste receptors are infertile. “They might detect infections, as bacteria have sweet structural compounds and secrete bitter and sour things as waste. Taste receptors can be found throughout the body, such as in the digestive and respiratory tracts. Knowing that testicles have taste receptors, the next obvious question is why? “You can just think of them like any other receptor in the body that is monitoring the environment,” Emma Beckett, a molecular nutritionist at the University of Newcastle in Australia, told ScienceAlert. (Editor’s Note: Please don’t inject your testicles with soy sauce). Unless you inject them with soy sauce, this viral challenge wouldn’t work. Besides, as far as scientists know, the taste receptors are on the inside of the testicles.
So although the testicles do contain taste receptors, they don’t lead to taste because they’re not connected to the brain. Without the brain doing that translating, you don’t actually taste sweet, bitter, sour, salty, or umami flavors. The receptors send signals over nerves to the brain, and the brain translates the signals into flavors. The testicle responds to ‘tastes’ as ‘chemical’ substances to decide whether to make more or less sperm and testosterone.” Taste buds, which are found in the mouth and upper esophagus, are clusters of sensory cells with hair-like projections and thousands of taste receptors. “The tongue responds to tastes and we decide whether food is edible. “There’s a tricky little difference between taste receptors on the tongue and those in the testicle,” urologist Paul Turek told the Huffington Post. The thing is, according to a 2013 study the taste receptors in testicles aren’t the same as those in our mouths. Testicles do, in fact, have taste receptors. But - shockingly - the viral trend does have a basis in truth. Wait, what? Let’s first get this out of the way: You can’t taste things with your testicles. Some social media stars claim they can taste the salty, umami flavor with their balls.
Do testicles have taste buds skin#
He further admitted that the smell alone may have tricked him into thinking that he "could taste it" and also a slight temperature change on the skin could have been a "confounding variable".Men across the nation have gone viral (again) for dipping their testicles in food - mostly soy sauce. Speaking to the publication, another user, who took up the trending challenge, said, “It may have just been my senses becoming heightened due to the fact I was putting my balls in an unfamiliar place, but I did feel a strange sensation as soon as they touched the sauce.” Well, it might be just "sensory overload," according to the report. Hence, the testes “respond to ‘tastes’ as ‘chemical’ substances to decide whether to make more or less sperm and testosterone,” and function differently from the taste buds of tongue, which help us to choose whether a food is edible or not.īut the question still might remain, whether people, who dipped their testes into soy sauce, lied about their excitement of a taste?
In a further engagement with the subject of how 'taste' functions in the testes, HuffPost found that apparently, the receptors "function inside the balls to sweet and savory tastes like and umami," which are essential to identify the compounding proteins in sperm production. SCIENTISTS: Taste receptors are everywhere (true fact!)THE INTERNET: I'm going to dip my balls in food!- Dr Emma Beckett January 21, 2020Įmma further explained that the taste receptors down there are called, "gustatory cortex", which for sure are not connected to the "taste centre in the brain".