Hey! I was wondering if you would help me understand something bcoz I've watched the show a few times and I don't really understand the sensate births? If the sensates are another species how is this possible if all their parents are sapiens? if they were born sensates, why did they only get their "powers" in their 20's...with the exception to Will/Riley who had experiences as kids? why did this happen to them briefly as kids? what IS a sensate birth, like...what is happening? I'm so confused!

Great question, anon. Let’s do some science!

*I just want everyone to know that this might not be 100% scientifically accurate, but it’s pretty darn close. I’m sure if the show continued for all 5 planned seasons, we would have gotten a lot more information about this in particular… but anyways, this is how I personally make sense of it.

First off, Riley & Will were born sensate no matter what. All 8 of them were. They just weren’t awoken to their cluster yet. If you are not awoken, you can still make eye contact with other sensates and connect to them. Just like Sara + Will, or Riley + Yrsa (the older Icelandic woman from Season 1) or Whispers + Sara. But Will & Riley both thought they were crazy because they didn’t understand that what they were seeing was actually real. It wasn’t in their imaginations, they just didn’t know how to make sense of it until Angelica unlocked the secrets for them by rebirthing them into the cluster. Will was sent to child therapy as a result and Riley turned to an old Icelandic legend about the “hidden people” that live in caves. She actually thought Yrsa was one of them. The mind of a child is creative and imaginative and these were the excuses they came up with in order for it to make sense to them, when in all reality they had just connected to another sensate.

Will, Riley & Sara were all “unborn” sensates. This means they had the ability to “visit” with the people they connected to as long as they made eye contact in real life. They just weren’t connected to their cluster yet until Angelica birthed them. When she did that, it activated them to their full sensate potential and connected them to the rest of the cluster. But that does not mean they were born sapien because they were not. They were born sensorium from the start. The rebirth is just sort of like a kick starter… a push to make some of the dormant genes turn active.

I suspect the reason for why Will & Riley (& Lito, who connected to Raoul but didn’t know it because he was lobotomized soon after) are the only three to connect to other sensates before the rebirth is because there are only thousands to tens of thousands of sensates in the entire world. There are 7 BILLION people in this word but only tens of thousands are sensates. It would be rare to meet another one, which is probably why 5/8 of them never did before they were awoken.

Also, you can be awoken to your cluster at any time in your life. It doesn’t have to be in your 20′s. It just has to be when your parent sensate is ready to give birth to you, and that differs from sensate to sensate. This basically just means the parent sensate activates the psycellium and wakes you the fuck up haha. They remove the veil from over your eyes and your mind begins to expand. It’s almost like opening the flood gates. All that water was still waiting behind the gate, it just needed someone to open it so that the water could pour out and flood the streets. The psycellium is similar.



Now let’s talk about how sensoriums are born to sapien parents. Well, for every single human being on this planet, DNA works the same way. Each of your parents carry dominant and recessive genes so I am going to use this scientific rule to try and explain.

Let’s go ahead and lay out a little biology outline to try and make recessive & dominant genes more clear:

Let’s say your mother has brown eyes (B) and your father has blue (b). Blue eyes are recessive which is why they are represented by a lowercase “b”. Brown eyes are dominant which is why they are represented by a capital “B”. But there’s a trick - your parents also got genes from their parents, correct? Every human is born with a certain genotype (active and inactive genes) given to them from their parents. So you get 1 from each parent, giving you 2 genes. You will end up either a BB, bb, or Bb depending on which genes are passed down from your parents. And your phenotype (active characteristics, what you can visually see) is determined by whatever genes you inherit.

BB (genotype) = Brown eyes (phenotype)

Bb (genotype) = Brown eyes (phenotype)

bb (genotype) = Blue eyes (phenotype)

So if you are born with blue eyes as well, that means that both of your parents had to have carried a recessive blue-eyed gene. There is no possible way for you to be born with blue eyes if one of your parents does not have the gene.

So let’s say that your mother (who has brown eyes) is Bb. This means that she may have brown eyes because it’s dominant, but she still carries the recessive “b” gene from one of her parents. Then she grows up and meets your father, who has blue eyes. This means that he is a bb.

Mom = Bb

Dad = bb

So then they have a child (you), and you end up with blue eyes. That means that your father gave you the only genes he had (b) but the gene you got from your mother was that hidden, inactive recessive blue-eyed gene. Rather than getting the dominant B gene from her, she passed down her recessive b gene instead. This is why you end up with blue eyes, because you got both recessive genes from your parents, making you a bb like your father.

But this wouldn’t happen with every single child they have because it really depends on which gene is passed down in utero.

So let’s say they have a second child. This time, your mother gives your sibling her dominant gene (B) and your father gives the only gene he can (b) so your sibling ends up a Bb like your mom. Brown eyes, but with a recessive blue-eyed gene in their DNA (the same can be said for twins but they must be fraternal not identical since fraternal twins gets a separate set of genes and identical twins get the exact same ones).

So let’s look at the homo sensorium as a similar analogy. Let’s pretend that the homo sapien gene is a dominant gene and the homo sensorium gene is a recessive gene (I really don’t know if this is actually the case, but it is the only way I am able to understand it).

Dominant homo sapien gene = H

Recessive homo sensorium gene = h

If your mother is a sapien, maybe her genes are Hh. She ended up sapien (H) because it’s dominant, but she still carries a dormant recessive sensorium gene (h). Then she goes ahead and has children with another sapien but his genes are also Hh. It would be rare, but because both parents would carry the recessive “h” gene, it is possible that their child would get the recessive genes from them while in utero, rather than the dominant, making their child an hh (AKA a full-blooded sensorium).



Every single sensate in the 8/8 cluster is an hh, meaning that they got both of the recessive sensorium genes from their sapien parents. But both parents had to have been Hh in order for this to happen, passing on the h instead of the H.

Then in Season 2, Jonas said that “epigenetic factors” are the reason for sensorium population growth. Epigenetic factors are potentially heritable changes in gene expression (active versus inactive genes) that does not involve changes to the underlying DNA sequence — a change in phenotype without a change in genotype — which in turn affects how cells read the genes. So this means that the inactive genes are being activated at an alarming rate, awakening more sensates. So sapiens who are born Hh, and show the phenotype of H (sapien) are somehow getting their recessive h genotype activated, which in turn becomes the new phenotype, replacing the old one.

I honestly wanted to find out so much more about this, but alas it wasn’t so. I pray for more seasons because I really want to understand this to my full potential and I hope the special covers a little more about it as well.

The only problem I have is that sensoriums are referred to as a different species but that honestly doesn’t sit well with me. They are still human, they aren’t as different as, let’s say, a tiger and a wolf are which are completely different species. I think sapiens vs. sensoriums shouldn’t be looked at so drastically. They aren’t completely different species, they are basically “siblings” rather than “cousins”. Which means that just a handful of genes are slightly different. Maybe even just 1 or 2. That’s it. So instead of tiger vs. wolf, we could use the analogy of a tiger vs. a lion. They are technically different species but they are both wild cats and they share an abundance of the same genes, but some factors make them different. Just like there are many different kinds of monkeys, many different kinds of cats, many different kinds of dogs. Kind of like a “breed”. So we can look at the homo sensorium as a sub species or a “breed” of the homo sapien race. Actually, let’s reverse that. The homo sapien is a sub species of the homo sensorium because according to Jonas, sensoriums came first.

I know it’s confusing and it really makes you think. But the science behind this show is quite remarkable and it takes a science nerd to fully understand it. I did my best at trying to make it as clear as possible so I hope I helped! xo