Pit Organ of the Snake: While most animals can sense some form of heat, the ability to ‘see’ infrared radiation is a rare and unique sensory ability in the natural world. Infrared waves are emitted by heated objects and to sense them, the receiver has to retain a stable temperature while sensing or risk overheating. Pit organs in snakes have evolved to be highly sensitive to small differences in temperature, enabling them to map the body heat of living organisms and differentiate them from inorganic materials of similar size. The anatomy of pit organs are unique as they have inbuilt cooling mechanisms while being spatially and temporally precise in sensory ability. Being able to percieve visual information that other organisms don’t have access to can lend a big advantage in biological, and more recently, bio-inspired man-made systems. Artificial IR sensing systems span applications ranging from military (night vision, surveillance, target tracking), to medicine (non-invasive imaging including tumor imaging since tumors are more metabolically active and warmer than surrounding tissues). As an engineer and neuroscientist, I was fascinated by the efficient and elegant design of the pit organ anatomy. While being anatomically accurate and sourced from published microscopy images, I have taken artistic license with the colors. This painting is part of my series “sensory perceptions” in which I try to capture the diversity and beauty of sensory perceptual systems.