Histology 3500 Blog 1 Tissue Choice: Pit Organs in Snakes
Date Due: October 22nd 2018 Blog by Alex Byrne Importance of Thermal Detection What a tasty meal may look like to a snake hunting a mouse using its pit organs to detect infrared (IR) radiation. https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100314/images/news.2010.122.mouse.jpg When we are young, we are told that there are five main senses; hearing, taste, touch, scent and sight. However, many organisms often omit some senses (such as sight in the case of fossorial organisms which have poorer sight), while others have additional senses that extend beyond the traditional five (such as electroreception in sharks). All animals are able to sense temperature and heat to some extent, but snakes are among the animals that have a specialised system that allow for a greater use than simply distinguishing "hot" and "cold". Some groups of snakes have specialised thermal receptive organs called pit organs. These specialised thermal receptors function as part of the snake