Why is the sense of sight important?

The sense of sight is important as it helps compensate for a loss of other senses, enables the differences between good and bad food to be distinguished, helps create impressions and find partners and helps ensure safety by perceiving signs of danger. People without the sense of sight find it difficult to interact with their environment as compared to those who have it.

The five senses include touching, tasting, hearing, seeing and smelling. The sense of sight is particularly important due to the following reasons:

• Avoiding danger: sight is the main sense used to take in surroundings. Without eyesight, it is quite difficult to tell whether potentially dangerous situations are ahead, therefore, sight ensures dangerous situations and materials are avoided.
• Relationships: the first point of contact between two people is eyesight and is vital for social interaction. The eyes play a significant role in attraction with regard to things like facial expression, gestures and body language.
• Helping when other senses are not effective: when the other senses are not effective for one reason or another, eyesight plays a crucial role in compensating for the loss. If, for example, the sense of smell is suffering due to a cold, the individual can only tell whether food is rotten or not before tasting it through vision.