How well do bp's see?

I am asking this out of pure curiousity. How is it that some bp's prefer one color of rat over another? I had a bp that would only eat white rats once. Can they see the color differnce or does each rat have a distinct odor to the snake?

I think they do see some colors. I read a few articles that showed how they see both visually and heat signatures. I believe their eye sight is not the best alone, but with the heat pits it creates a very crystal clear image of what they are looking at.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Why-D...rk-32291.shtml

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...0/ai_17867815/
Honestly, you can probably google "how well do snakes see" and read quite a few more articles, these are just the ones I found interesting. :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by LGray23

I think they do see some colors. I read a few articles that showed how they see both visually and heat signatures. I believe their eye sight is not the best alone, but with the heat pits it creates a very crystal clear image of what they are looking at.

http://news.softpedia.com/news/Why-D...rk-32291.shtml

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...0/ai_17867815/
Honestly, you can probably google "how well do snakes see" and read quite a few more articles, these are just the ones I found interesting. :)

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Thanks for the links. I am surely going to google this!

I thought the first one was kind of cool, it shows you how they see using both senses, then the image of using those senses together...pretty interesting! Not sure if we'll ever know for sure though. I'm curious to see if anyone has any other interesting links on this.

I actually did a bit of research on this they see colour a bit less colours than we do but still quite a few, similar to setting a file in photoshop to 512 colours (image/mode/indexed colour). Guessing there they have a range of thousands of colours not millions like we do. The other complex part is the heat pits are connected to the optical nerve in the brain so quite literally they see heat over visual images. a visual spectrum is from the end or ultraviolet to near ir for humans but snakes see farther into uv and most if not all IR. How that is overlaid with the visual information from the eyes can only be guessed at but it means that they see very well much better than humans can in low light. a CHE for example would shine like a bulb as it is warm and what we understand as temperature they see as light.

ref,
Ball Pythons Barker and Barker
the beauty of snakes BBC
Journal of herpetology london 1999

It would make sense that their vision is less color sensitive because they are nocturnal. Rods, the photoreceptors that sense black and white scales, are more efficient than cones, the photoreceptors that sense color, in low light environments. It's why you can tell that a car is blue in the daylight, but you can't tell if it's blue or green if you see it going by at night. You can only see that it's dark or light.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kitedemon

I actually did a bit of research on this they see colour a bit less colours than we do but still quite a few, similar to setting a file in photoshop to 512 colours (image/mode/indexed colour). Guessing there they have a range of thousands of colours not millions like we do. The other complex part is the heat pits are connected to the optical nerve in the brain so quite literally they see heat over visual images. a visual spectrum is from the end or ultraviolet to near ir for humans but snakes see farther into uv and most if not all IR. How that is overlaid with the visual information from the eyes can only be guessed at but it means that they see very well much better than humans can in low light. a CHE for example would shine like a bulb as it is warm and what we understand as temperature they see as light.

ref,
Ball Pythons Barker and Barker
the beauty of snakes BBC
Journal of herpetology london 1999

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Thank you for this information! This is exactly what I was looking for!

Hi,

There is also the fact that different colours have different heat absorbtion properties.

I have no idea if that translates to an identifiable difference in rodent hair though.


dr del