I have been wondering a few of these my self so i looked it up. Pulled from a news article here http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98115&page=1
"That's because pit vipers, like rattlesnakes, and the group of snakes including pythons or boas can literally see the world in two different ways. They can use their eyes to create a visual image of the world around them, just like humans do, or they can use their extraordinarily sensitive infrared sensors to create a similar image based upon heat emitted by objects in their environment."