Talk:Infrared sensing in snakes

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: 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)
thread_title: Taxonomy

message: "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)
thread_title: Physics

message: 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)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: OK, I'll try to get round to it :) Cloning jedi (talk) 11:25, 28 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Neuroscience

message: 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)
thread_title:  Electroreception 

message: 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)
thread_title:  Vasculature