Scaleless snakes

[Pythonfriend]

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.

yes they can still sense heat, just like i can with the back of my hand. But they can no longer sense which direction the heat is coming from. If you have a pit, and a source of warmth in front of you, some areas in the pit will get infrared radiation and other areas of the pit are in the shadow.

.......... <--- two heat sources (please ignore the points ....... couldnt get it done without them, formatting issues)

........---- <--- flat surface

in this case, both heat sources cannot be distinguished from one another. both illuminate all of the heat-sensitive skin.

........... <--- two heat sources

.........\/\/ <--- surface with pits

in this case, the two sources of radiation can be distinguished. when the left heat source is radiating, the green segments will be activated and the red ones will be in shadow. Ball pythons, with their row of 10 heat pits, can do that so well that blind snakes can find and strike a rhodent and hit it. Flatten the surface, and almost all the data is lost. its like having an eye without a lens, that only senses how bright it is in front of the head, without producing an image.

so i do think the heat pit issue is a real issue.

[xFenrir]

Not trying to start anything, but I think the whole argument of "would it survive in the wild?" is completely irrelevant when you're talking about animals that will never know what the "wild" is. The wild has mainly "normals" because that's what survives best out there. But in captivity, there's no advantage or disadvantage to color or size or any other physical attribute. Also, there are very few morphs that actually carry a genetic flaw, like the Spider or Pearl.

I feel it's an apples to oranges comparison. Why debate it, unless you're somehow planning to release morphs BACK to the wild?

[meowmeowkazoo]

Scaleless snakes are gross looking.

[asplundii]

yes they can still sense heat, just like i can with the back of my hand. But they can no longer sense which direction the heat is coming from. If you have a pit, and a source of warmth in front of you, some areas in the pit will get infrared radiation and other areas of the pit are in the shadow.

in this case, both heat sources cannot be distinguished from one another. both illuminate all of the heat-sensitive skin.

in this case, the two sources of radiation can be distinguished. when the left heat source is radiating, the green segments will be activated and the red ones will be in shadow. Ball pythons, with their row of 10 heat pits, can do that so well that blind snakes can find and strike a rhodent and hit it. Flatten the surface, and almost all the data is lost. its like having an eye without a lens, that only senses how bright it is in front of the head, without producing an image.

so i do think the heat pit issue is a real issue.

And again I contend that the heat pit issue it is not one.

Your hand analogy is comparing apples to oranges. First off, you can tell direction of heat from the back of your hand (or at least I can at any rate) but more importantly, the nerves on the back of your hand are not evolved for the purpose of heat detection unlike the nerves that populate the pits. Secondly, the heat-sensing nerves are so sensitive that they can detect fractions of a degree differences so the, for lack of a better term, "decay" of heat over distance between any, say, three pits would create a heat "gradient" that would allow for accurate pinpointing.

Further, the upper lip area of a ball python is not flat like your example would contend, but is instead curved which adds another dimension by which to create a "gradient" for detection and would most certainly provide a right/left orientation.

Lastly, there are a second set of pits on each side of the mouth that line the back region of the lower jaw area. These increase the amount of information received by the animal thereby offering greater "resolution" of the direction of the source.


Or, in a rough picture:

Ball python face

......____
...../......\
..../........\
.../...........\
../.............\
./..............\
/................\



And now if we insert your heat sources:

..........



......____
...../......\
..../........\
.../...........\
../.............\
./..............\
/................\


If you project the path of the "heat" from each source then the simple bilateral nature of the head give the snake the ability to orient left/right without the need for pits. And having three separate regions of heat-sensing nerves, each made up of multiple sub-components, allows for a "parallax" that provides further information about the position and distance of the heat source.

Basically the face of the ball python is a heat interferometer, even without the physical structure of the pits

[zina10]

interesting..

but I have to say, I'm sure the pits are there for a reason, perhaps they protect that area.

Still not a fan..

[Skyrivers]

Why settle for scaleless?

I'm sure if the community tried hard enough, a skinless ball python could be bred.

Why stop at skinless? Why not zombie?

hehehehehehehehehe.

Sorry could not resist.

[JRLongton]

Please read my post in the respectful tone in which I intended it to be read.

I'm no biologist, but I'm sure those pits are there for a reason.

I don't need any complicated explanation to understand that a covered heat sensing pit is less sensitive than an open one.

How much less? Is it marginal, like wearing a pair of clear glass glasses, or is it more dramatic, like wearing a pair of dirty extra dark sunglasses?

We simply can't know because the BP can't tell us. But maybe we want to be a bit more hesitant before we so drastically alter the creatures physiology.

[Stewart_Reptiles]

5 years thread peeps

[JRLongton]

LOL!!

I dind't notice. There was a similar thread going on recently and I thought this was a continuation.

[zina10]

5 years thread peeps

True, but this was linked to from a current thread