The enviroment has an effect on a snakes ability to sense heat.
This may have been covered at some point since I did actually read this on Wikipedia, but this could help people having problems getting a snake to eat... maybe... Yeah not sure but it could work.
Wiki article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_sensing_in_snakes
Excerpt:
Quote:
Snakes may deliberately choose ambush sites with low thermal background radiation (colder areas) to maximize the contrast of their warm prey in order to achieve such a high degree of accuracy from their thermal “vision”.
If you read the entire article you find that the heat recepting pits adjust to the general temperature for the area they are in, as such in a colder condition the base temperature they pick up will be lower, which will gradually be set to the neutral temperature. If a lower temperature is their neutral temperature then when you expose them to a higher temperature object (your hand, a mouse, a heat element, etc) it will be a more clear image for them. This COULD (I'm not certain) make them more likely to strike.
Of course this is assuming you will either reduce their temperature in where they are kept, or that you will move them to a different container.
If that didn't seem clear to anyone: Imagine it like sound, if you are in a room with little sound you will notice very minor changes in the background noise (i.e. your refrigerator running, the ticking of a clock, etc), however if you are in a room with a lot of music playing you will no longer hear those little noises as your ears adjust to the sound of the music playing, thus in order to get your attention there will have to be a much louder intrusion. I'm sure we've all experienced this at some point or another which is why I use this example.
As I said in the beginning this may have been noted before. Also the rate that they adjust to the external temperature is fairly rapid, so you shouldn't need to decrease the temperature for a long time for them to have heightened senses.
