Snakes like pythons, boas, vipers and rattlesnakes detect the body heat of nearby prey using heat sensory pit organs on their faces.

"Facial pit organs tend to be found around a snake's nostrils and lips. It gives a whole new meaning to the nickname hot lips!" said Questacon Science Educator, Cindy Chambers.

Questacon -- The National Science and Technology Centre in Canberra -- has created an interactive exhibit based on this amazing sensory ability found in certain snakes. People who use the Super Senses Snake exhibit can 'see' for themselves how snakes detect the warm bodies of their prey.

Questacon has been producing interactive science exhibitions, science shows and outreach programs for more than fifteen years now, but this is the first exhibit to use thermal imaging technology.

"Questacon is always seeking innovative ways of communicating science and technology to a general audience. Sometimes this is achieved using simple, everyday materials and at other times, we use advanced, complex technology such as the thermal imaging camera," said Cindy.

"Snakes have been using thermal imaging for thousands, even millions of years. The thermal imaging camera, however, was developed in the late 20th Century."

The Super Senses Snake exhibit is part of Questacon's newest exhibition, Eaten Alive -- The World of Predators. To demonstrate this unique capability of snakes to sense the warm bodies of their prey, even in the dark, Questacon has combined a state of the art thermal imaging camera with an elaborate robotic snake's head.

Questacon visitors using the Super Senses Snake exhibit can control a robotic snake's head containing a thermal imaging camera (representing the snake's pit organs).

As the robotic snake sweeps around a rock wall, the camera detects 'warm prey' (stuffed toys with heat elements) concealed in the diorama. Visitors can watch the thermal view of the space on a nearby monitor. They quickly see a different world, one that highlights any small potential prey. Essentially, Super Senses Snake gives Questacon visitors a snake-eye view of the world.

"While visitors enjoying using the camera to view warm blooded prey in the exhibit, they love it when they can see the heat generated by their own bodies. People enjoying comparing how 'hot blooded' they are, and they're a little surprised at how the thermal camera can betray poor circulation in their fingers by showing areas of blue and green instead of red to orange at their fingertips," explained Cindy.

In devising this interactive exhibit, the challenge was how to demonstrate the finely tuned heat sensing abilities of snakes to a human audience with very limited heat sensing ability. Humans can see coloured light from violet (which has a short wavelength), through to blue, green, yellow, orange and red light (which has a long wavelength.)

Radiation that is longer in wavelength than red light is known as infrared radiation. Very hot objects radiate yellow, orange and red light that humans can see and infrared radiation that humans cannot see. Warm objects may not radiate red, yellow or orange light, but they still emit infrared radiation.

Scientists are debating whether snakes with pit organs can detect the infrared radiation or the actual radiant heat given off by warm bodies (just as humans can feel a warm body on their skin, although the snake's thermoreceptors are far more complex).

Snakes do not 'measure' the body temperature of prey. Just as humans find it difficult to see things in bright sunlight glare, snakes must distinguish between the prey's warm body and the background heat.