Infrared Sensitivity
We usually think of snakes to be venomous creatures only, but hardly even ponder about their other features that god has given them. I am quite sure that most of us don’t even know that they can sense vibrations of other creatures and reptiles that walk around them. And I am even quite sure that we might have not even heard that they have infrared pits near their eyes, or to be more precise that they have them under their eyes.
But this is true, we always talk about and concentrate on their fangs and venom but don’t think about other features, such as these state above.
Snakes have usually very poor eyesight and the only thing that makes them those perfect night hunters are their infrared sensory pits and their vibration sensing organs. Most of the snakes that have these sensory organs are known as the “pitt viper”, this is the category to which they belong to. It’s these pits that help them to see even during the night time. For they, help the snake to see and locate the prey.
This is how it works, the snake first of all takes the smell of the prey from miles away, and then the snake would slowly walk towards the victim or the prey. The heat sensing organs allow the snake to determine the size of the prey that it would want to hunt on. These pits create some thermal image and help the snake to determine the size of the prey or even determine whether what would be the best time to attack it.
If the prey seems to be a warm blooded creature such as the rodent or a lizard then perhaps it would strike immediately. But if according to these sensory organs if the creature seems to be another snake or a cold blooded creature such as some other reptile like a large lizard or a Gila monster then it would think twice before it would strike.
So in this way the snake would prey on other warm blooded reptiles and creatures. If these infrared sensory organs show the snake a red image then it would immediately strike and if it shows green or yellow then it would not strike and just move away from that place.
All snakes have this feature, be it the vipers that are found in the deserts or those boa and anaconda that are found in those tropical rain forests.
This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 11:06 am and is filed under Perception. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.