Quote Originally Posted by pythonminion View Post
Boas and woma pythons do fine without heat pits.
Many boas have heat pits. See this ETB: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...9QEwBA&dur=574

Woma pythons (and Blackhead pythons) also have heat pits, they are just not as flagrant as those of other pythons

Quote Originally Posted by Kurtilein View Post
i think when the heat pits are covered with skin like this, they are essentially gone. Infrared radiation can be effectively blocked by the thinnest paper you can imagine, and a layer of skin will do the job. And only the geometry of the pits allows ball pythons to detect the direction of incoming infrared radiation, for any directional sensing the pits need to be deep, essentially the derma-ball in the picture is half blind.
You are quite mistaken about these animals losing their ability to sense heat. I do not know why people assume that a lack of the physical "pit" means that the snake suddenly loses the ability to sense heat. The nerves for sensing heat are still present in a scale-less ball python and they still reside in the lip area. Losing the scales that define the pit has no impact on the nerves that are present in those areas. In point of fact the pits are the result of an evolutionary process to allow those nerves to be directly exposed and not be covered by scales while still offering a degree of protection to the underlying exposed skin. The snake in that picture is not "half blind" at all, in fact, if you look back at the picture you can make out the indentation of a couple of pits, on just below the nostril and one just forward of there. It can sense heat just fine.