History Main / SuperSenses

* Aya Syameimaru from the ''{{Touhou}}'' series, a [[RavensAndCrows tengu]] who possesses the ability to see and hear things from a great distance. [[IntrepidReporter All the better to]] [[{{Paparazzi}} get scoops with]].

* '''Sight:''' Also known as Telescopic and Microscopic Vision, these enhancements let you see things far away and of miniscule size. Less often, it's also "[[HyperAwareness snapshot]]" precise, letting you see in slow motion or in "Bullet Time". Also has "Night Vision" and "Infra Red" flavours, allowing the hero to see in low light or by heat signatures.

** Also in {{Discworld}} are the Listening Monks, who are trying to hear the echo of the universe's creation. They will not even accept a monk for ''training'' unless he can hear the result of a coin toss. When he's done, he's expected to hear what colour the coin is. [[spoiler:As an aside, they succeed. The sound is: "[[ThePowerOfRock One. Two. One, two, three, four]]-"]]

* Time Lords have highly advanced senses, including a strong sense of smell, so strong they can smell when another Time Lord is on the same planet. They also have a magicel "Time Lord sense" that allows then to sense changes in the timeline and determine which points are fixed and which are in flux. The Tenth Doctor in ''DoctorWho'' also appears to have a ridiculously good sense of taste, able to identify some material compositions by tasting them. In ''The Christmas Invasion'', he identifies not just human blood, but what blood type it is.

* Hyde in {{Jekyll}}. "Oooh, nice...but it's not your usual perfume, there's another one underneath." He later senses what gender a pregnant woman's baby is, how long ago an ex-smoker gave up, and how long said ex-smoker has to live before his tumour kills him.

** Fooled ya, didn't? But still, he does do that of

* Terezi from ''{{Homestuck}}'' is blind, but she can approximate sight by smelling colours and occasionally tasting them as well for greater clarity. She isn't really treated as having a superhuman ability to smell ''normal'' smells, but it counts anyway. (She's [[RubberForeheadAliens an]] [[AllTrollsAreDifferent alien]], but the trolls' senses are basically the same as humans' in general. Except for the part where about a third of them have psychic powers, but that's not the point.)

** Beasts from ''ChangelingTheLost'' can buy the Contracts of Fang and Talon, the second level of which allows them to borrow the senses of the Contact's type of animal (e.g., the sight of a bird of prey, the scent tracking of canines). If the animal in question is not known for heightened senses (e.g., goats), they get a sizeable flat bonus to Perception rolls instead.

** This troper saw the Orphan as a bit of a subversion of the idea of super-senses. As mentioned, he had to wear a special suit constantly, but he even had to use a special salve to dull his senses if he wanted to...eh...get ''physical'' with anyone. And at one point, a villain who has knowledge of the Orphan's power uses it against him: he has a henchman hold the Orphan tight, then tears open the suit and tortures him...by lightly scratching him with a ''penknife''. To the Orphan's enhanced senses, it was unimaginably painful.

* It is possible to train your senes of touch to become more sensitive, though this does take a lot of time. Blind people rapidly gain super sensitivity in their fingers, allowing some of them to read Braille with amazing speed.

* Two memebers of the GUYS Crew in ''UltramanMebius'' had heightened senses - George with his sight, and Marina with her hearing.

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* '''Sight:''' Also known as Telescopic and Microscopic Vision, these enhancements let you see things far away and of miniscule size. Less often, it's also "[[HyperAwareness snapshot]]" precise, letting you see in slow motion or in "Bullet Time". Also has "Night Vision" and "Infra Red", allowing the hero to see in low light or by heat signatures.

For extrasensory perception, see SpiderSense and PsychicPowers. Compare TheDeadHaveEyes.

[[AC:LiveActionTV]]
* ''Jake2.0'' had all of his body functions enhanced.
* Vampires frequently have this. In fact, in the Vampire Detective show ''Moonlight,'' there was a drug, "Black Crystal", that temporarily gave its users vampiric-level sensory prowess, which made for a pretty good trip.
* Thermoman in ''MyHero'' also seems to have this power. He can smell natural disasters. Yes, smell natural disaster.
* The show called ''TheSentinel'' had this as a premise. It came with a catch, though: Whenever the titular Sentinel focused on one of his senses, making it super-acute, he lost the other 4 almost completely. So while he can spot a sniper in a darkened window from half a city-block away on a moonless night, he meanwhile can't hear the guy right next to him screaming at him to get his head down.
* Clark in ''{{Smallville}}'' does this, as his build up to becoming Superman.
** In one episode of the '90s ''{{Superboy}}'' series, Lex Luthor attacked Superboy with a noise-device that inflicted pain thanks to the target's super-hearing ability.
* ''The Six Million Dollar Man'' he only used sight and hearing.
* Radu from ''SpaceCases'' has super hearing, with the requisite complaining about loud (and small, irritating) noises, especially when he's in the same room as Catalina when she uses her supersonic screaming ability.
* Time Lords have highly advanced senses, including a strong sense of smell, so strong they can smell when another Time Lord is on the same planet. They also have a magicel "Time Lord sense" that allows then to sense changes in the timeline and determine which points are fixed and which are in flux. The Tenth Doctor in ''DoctorWho'' also appears to have a ridiculously good sense of taste, able to identify some material compositions by tasting them. In ''The Christmas Invasion'', he identifies not just human blood, but what blood type it is.
** Which FridgeLogic suggests is a bit worrying; it's not enough to have super-taste, you also need to be ''familiar'' with the taste of different types of human blood...
** He could also identify mistletoe oil by licking the wall. And he stuck two fingers in a jar of jam and licked them in ''Fear Her''. And he licked ''sand'' in ''Planet of the Dead''. All of which leads fans to believe that he has an, ahem, oral fixation.
** The Eleventh Doctor has this trait as well. When companion Amy Pond asks him about it after eating some grass, ("Have you always been this disgusting?") he says, "No, that's recent."
* Clement [=McDonald=] in {{Torchwood}}: ''Children of Earth'' has a superhuman sense of smell which he can use to determine everything from the presence of aliens to a person's sexuality.
* Constable Fraser in ''DueSouth'' can also identify unexpected things by taste.
* ''{{House}}''. The hostage taker in the 5th season episode "Last Resort" suffers from hyperacusis. When talking on the phone he suddenly hangs up, runs across the room, and has someone open the blinds revealing a SWAT team sneaking outside the window. Even the hostages standing right next to that window didn't hear them approaching.
* Gus from {{Psych}} dubbed his nose the Super Sniffer and it has proven useful during investigations.
* Two memebers of the GUYS Crew in ''UltramanMebius'' had heightened senses - George with his sight, and Marina with her hearing.
* Hyde in {{Jekyll}}. "Oooh, nice...but it's not your usual perfume, there's another one underneath." He later senses what gender a pregnant woman's baby is, how long ago an ex-smoker gave up, and how long said ex-smoker has to live before his tumour kills him.

* There are lots of mutants with one or more enhanced senses in the WhateleyUniverse. Aquerna has the spirit of the squirrel, so she has enhanced sight and smell (as well as being regarded as one of the school losers). Chaka has figured out how to use her Ki abilities to simulate seeing in slow motion. Jinn Sinclair can ''see'' emotions and magic and superpowers. And so on.

[[AC:{{Anime}} and {{Manga}}]]
* Subaru of ''MagicalGirlLyricalNanoha'' revealed that she has "pretty good eyesight" in the [[ComicBookAdaptation supplementary manga]] set before the third season when she's able to clearly read the names on a screen despite being so far away that her partner couldn't even see a thing. [[spoiler: This turned out to be a hint on her [[HollywoodCyborg cyborg nature]] as telescopic sight and other forms of enhanced vision is part of their package]].
* Asuna from ''MahouSenseiNegima'' possesses both super sight and super hearing. To give some examples, she was the only one to see the eraser momentarily floating above Negi's head despite the entire class looking at Negi at the time in the first chapter, and she managed to clearly hear the conversation Eva and Setsuna were having in the ring even though she was in the sidelines of a noisy arena during the Mahora Festival's TournamentArc. Just some of the many hints on Asuna's MysteriousWaif nature. Setsuna's [[KiAttacks ki]] allows her to at least triple her senses.
** Rakan and Chamo have both demonstrated a remarkable sense of smell, when they were able to locate an opponent who was more than 30 kilometers away by following the scent of her ''[[PantyThief panties.]]''
** Also, be reading the flow and charge of the air around him, Rakan was able to anticipate and counter the super speed that Negi got from his Raisoku Shundou technique (which basically made Negi a living lightning bolt).
* Francoise aka 003 from ''{{Cyborg 009}}'' had ultra-augmented eyesight and hearing coming from her Cyborg enhancements. Problem is, the poor girl's powers aren't always on par with her more physically-geared teammates's skills, which often causes her genuine psychological distress since she more than once feels useless compared to them.
* Star Platinum, Jotaro's stand from ''[=~Jojo's Bizarre Adventure~=]'' has extraordinarily good vision, being able to draw a fly in the back of a dusty and dark photograph so detailed that they determined where the photo was taken based on the fly's native origin.
* From ''YuYuHakusho'', we have one of the three demon kings Yomi, who is blind but possesses three pairs of ears that allow him to literally hear everything that goes on within his kingdom. No whispered secret is safe from him.
* The Inuzuka clan from ''{{Naruto}}'' all train their noses to be super-sensitive; at one point, Kiba states that his nose is now more sensitive than a ninja hound's.
** Not to mention the Sharingan and Byakugan. Clearly MasashiKishimoto loves this trope.
* From ''RurouniKenshin'' we have the Oniwa-Banshu, ninja trained to hear the faintest of sounds.
* Sapphire of ''PokemonSpecial''. Amongst the many abilities she gained from having more-or-less grown up as a WildChild include [[TheNoseKnows an acute sense of smell for tracking]], a sense of hearing that allowed her to continue moving despite being blind, and a sense of sight powerful enough to clearly read the tiny writing on Jirachi's wish tag even though it was floating far away.
* Black Star of {{Soul Eater}}. His heightened senses are used early on to track Masamune, more recently in an attempt to find Medusa, and is said to compensate to an extent for his lack of soul perception.

* It is possible to train your senes of touch to become more sensitive, though this does take a lot of time. Blind people rapidly gain super sensitivity in their fingers, allowing some of them to read Braill with amazing speed.

In most cases, they completely ignore the drawbacks of super senses. The characters are never overloaded by too much sensory information (a crowd of people all talking at once when you have super hearing is really overwhelming) or by experiencing some unpleasant stimuli much more intensely (e.g., if you have super smell, how do you react to a skunk?). And when it comes to ''pain''... yikes!

See also BeingWatched, SpiderSense, VeinOVision, {{X-Ray Vision}}, BlindfoldedVision and MysteriousAnimalSenses. This trope is key to [[MySensorsIndicateYouWantToTapThat a certain gag]]. Beware of SensoryOverload.

See also BeingWatched, SpiderSense, VeinOVision, {{X-Ray Vision}}, BlindfoldedVision and MysteriousAnimalSenses. This trope is key to [[MySensorsIndicateYouWantToTapThat a certain gag]].

* '''Touch:''' This can be the most [[EvilIsSexy sensuous]] of the super sense powers, bordering on the clairvoyant. It lets supers notice intricate details of whatever they touch, including reading words from print through touch alone.

* '''Taste:''' Perhaps the most [[EvilTastesGood hedonistic]] of the super sense powers, conferring less noticeable benefits than the others. Nonetheless, Super Taste lets heroes notice everything from chemical and genetic composition, toxicity (better hope you got super immunity, too!), origin (both geographical and biological), and age.

* '''Taste:''' Perhaps the most [[EvilTastesGood hedonistic]] of the super sense powers, conferring less noticeable benefits than the others. Nonetheless, Super Taste lets heroes notice everything from chemical and genetic composition, toxicity (better hope you got super immunity, too!) origin (both geographical and biological), and age.

* ''{{Jake2.0}}'' had all of his body functions enhanced.

** Enhanced Vision: the character gains the ability to see a significant portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, letting them see "a total of several dozen
colors, instead of the seven ordinary human eyes can perceive". Additionally, they have telescopic capabilities equivalent to binoculars.

* While not explicitly stated, the Tenth Doctor in ''DoctorWho'' appears to have a ridiculously good sense of taste, able to identify some material compositions by tasting them. In ''The Christmas Invasion'', he identifies not just human blood, but what blood type it is.

* In PN Elrod's ''Vampire Files'' series, the vampire Jack Fleming has unusually acute senses. This is one of the few stories I've seen that mentions the disadvantages of this, because Jack finds violin music painful even if it's well-played.