Talk:Infrared sensing in snakes

A fact from Infrared sensing in snakes appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 7 December 2007. The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that pit vipers and some boas and pythons have specialized facial pits for sensing infrared radiation?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2007/December.

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Taxonomy

A very nice article except that the taxonomy is a little off. The text refers repeatedly to the boids -- family Boidae -- as though it includes both boas and pythons. It would be better if the ITIS taxonomy were followed, which considers these snakes to be two different families: the Pythonidae and the Boidae. --Jwinius 00:54, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm ... You're right, though this is the first time I'd heard this. (Herp class last semester, and the text we used, still have them listed as Boidae.) I will see if I can figure out an eloquent way to change it. Serpentnirvana 21:07, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Boidae => boids (= boines and erycines). Pythonidea => pythonids. Or simply boas and pythons. I recently reorganized most of the python section, but the boa section is still a mess. --Jwinius 23:13, 3 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Physics

"Thermal radiation from colder objects cools the nerve..."

It's been a while since I've had any formal study of thermodynamics (and not much then), but in the world I'm familiar with there's no such thing as negative thermal radiation... It would be more accurate to say that "lack of thermal radiation from colder objects allows the nerve to cool" or something like that. Lfishel (talk) 04:36, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Good catch, I've fixed it. Mokele (talk) 13:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Neuroscience

It appears that the pit viper at least detects radiant heating (at the molecular level) through a system that is not analogous to visual photochemical transduction. But I'm not sure if you'd want to include this, nor where: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v464/n7291/full/nature08943.html Cloning jedi (talk) 15:16, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely worth including - this is the first real evidence of any sort of mechanism for IR sensing. I'll put in a little blurb, but it's pretty far outside my area of expertise, so if you can expand it, that'd be great. Mokele (talk) 16:33, 27 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll try to get round to it :) Cloning jedi (talk) 11:25, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Snake Heat Detection Experiments

With respect to the pit vipers being able to quickly navigate a very warm maze and find refuge in a comfortable cool location, I would be very interested to read more about who did these experiments and whether or not they performed the reverse experiment. That being placing any snake in a cool area and determine whether they detect and seek out a comfortable cool area in a maze or even in an open space.

I have a couple of corn snakes and will contemplate setting up an experiment to see if they are able to seek out a warm object when they are in a cool environment. The assumption being, they can see it across an open space and will thus move toward it, instead of staying near the edge of the cool area where they start. It seems corn snakes like to hug the walls of any open area. If they go directly to the source of warmth, one could conclude they saw the heat source. Anyone care to comment on this plan?

Thank you, Maxtrack (talk) 13:22, 21 January 2012 (UTC) Allen[reply]

The full text of the study using a Y-maze is here: http://jeb.biologists.org/content/207/24/4231.long

While I commend your desire to experiment, I must point out that corn snakes are not known to possess IR heat receptors. Given that true vipers failed the test, presumably due to their similar lack, I doubt corn snakes will succeed. HCA (talk) 17:02, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Electroreception

Infrared receptors

Wouldn't the electrophysiology of Infrared sensing in snakes (infrared receptors) qualify as 'Electroreception'? ~E:74.60.29.141 (talk) 02:07, 6 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, otherwise every nerve impulse in the body of every organism would be electroreception. Voltage differentials are the means nerves use to transmit information, and these can be detected by electrophysiology, but that doesn't mean the sensory (or effector) is detecting electrical signals, but rather that mechanical, chemical or other signals are converted into electrical signals for processing by the brain. HCA (talk) 19:15, 11 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Vasculature

A couple of places in the article speak of vasculature rapidly cooling receptors preventing afterimages (the Goris, CR; et al. (2003) reference). As far as I know, this is not how it works. The heating and cooling effect of the radiation is the same, so the image will heat and cool the membrane, direct sensor cooling will reduce sensitivity and increase speed (the latter being the effect described), similar to if the membrane weren't insulated by air, rendering it less effective. The differentiating action (responsive only to changes) of the sensors makes the "cooling" arrangement doubly unnecessary, similar to the way pyroelectric sensors work. But if the snake could control the cooling effect, that would be very useful. I'm not going to overwrite the article obviously, but I thought a comment from the engineering perspective might help the article improve. This should be common knowledge in the field of thermal imaging and radiometry, with plenty of references and people who know more than me. Adx (talk) 15:06, 17 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]