I'm quite suprised but yes...both answers are correct.
While I was preparing my post I got really suprised about the informations I found. I planned to explain some physiological issues and then I found out that 'homunculus' has also different meaning. I decided to show you what I found :).
Homunculus is a legendary dwarf, humanoid creature who was a dream of many alchemists. They were cursed by 7 deadly sins and they weren't really pretty, actually they were small and wrinkled. Due to the legends they could have been created by some really disgusting procedures such as: damage of the black hen's egg and then infusion of the husband's sperm to it. People believed that 30 days later small creature will be born. There are many other theories how homunculus could be created- for example it could be a part of mysterious plant who grows right under the hangman. Pretty creepy, huh?
Luckily it's only a crazy legend but I wanted to tell you about it. I found it quite interesting ;).
Now, let's take a look at homunculus-physiological fact.
It will be much easier if you actually see what I'm talking about.
picture: Mpj29/wikipedia.org
This small human being is a representation of somatosensory maps of the cortex. Okay, but what is it exactly?
A magic key to understand this issue is a word called receptor. Our whole body has many types of receptors. They are receiving informations/impulses from the inside and outside of our body. The information from one particular area of our skin is transmitted by nerve fibres which are close to each other. In the end signal is provided to adjoined areas in the cortex. Cortex is a place in our brain where the impulse is getting estimated and the localisation of it is recognized.
Quick summary: the more receptors we have on particular area of our skin the bigger is a representation of this in our cortex so these parts of the body are more sensitive :). As you can see on the picture above very sensitive areas of our body are lips, hands, face or tongue. Do you agree with that? :)
I hope you liked my post ;). Have a nice day.
P.S I'm really sorry for any english mistakes. I did my best.
This is the funny side of science :) Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for reading! I'm glad you liked it :)