How Snakes See Two Ways

Jan. 9 -- As a kid growing up in the rolling hills of central Georgia, Michael Grace loved to walk around with a pocket full of snakes.

"Most people were terrified of them," including his mom, which made life around the Grace home a little awkward at times, he says all these years later.

But to a kid in Georgia, that just made snakes all the more interesting.

As the years passed he turned his hobby into a profession. Now, he spends his time probing the world of snakes in his laboratory at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

The secrets he is learning from the fascinating reptiles that live in his lab could someday lead to major advancements in everything from heat seeking missiles for the military to tiny devices that might help physicians locate tumors in the human body.

That's because pit vipers, like rattlesnakes, and the group of snakes including pythons or boas can literally see the world in two different ways. They can use their eyes to create a visual image of the world around them, just like humans do, or they can use their extraordinarily sensitive infrared sensors to create a similar image based upon heat emitted by objects in their environment.

They can switch back and forth between those two systems, or use both simultaneously, giving them a leg up, so to speak, when it comes to targeting a warm object.

Snake-Eyed Missiles

What has intrigued Grace for years now is how snakes are able to do so much with so little. A rattlesnake, for instance, has one small pit on each side of its head, filled with thousands of receptor cells, which are actually microscopic-sized infrared sensors. Yet despite their tiny size, the sensors are at least 10 times more sensitive than the best artificial infrared sensors that have ever been built, says Grace, a biology professor at Florida Tech.

Unlike artificial sensors, they don't require an elaborate cooling system, and they can repair themselves if damaged.

All of which set Grace to thinking.