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all creatures have some way of sensing
infrared radiation the low frequency
light waves that we feel
as heat but some dial this sense up to
11. like they can detect a fire
from kilometers away or see their world
with heat
alone and these amazing critters are
inspiring
some super hot tech that could make our
world safer
and more knowable most animals turn and
run the other way when a fire approaches
but not some species of jewel beetles
they're always on the hunt for freshly
burnt wood
because that's the only place their
babies can develop so they need to be
able to sense a fire from pretty far off
at the same time they need to
distinguish between recently burned
and burning wood since the latter would
kill them
so they have evolved some really fancy
heat sensors
which help them detect fires at a
distance and
determine whether something close by is
too hot
or just right and these heat sensors are
in their armpits well not really their
armpits because beetles don't
have arms but they do have a pair of
pits below their middle legs
and each pit contains around 70
dome-shaped sensors that expand when
they absorb the energy from infrared
radiation this expansion
bends a single very sensitive hair
inside each sensor which then sends a
signal to the beetle's brain
that there is a fire nearby even an
incredibly weak signal
is quickly amplified by the number of
sensors in each pit
which likely explains how they can
detect a fire
that is 12 kilometers away and these
super sensitive pits
are inspiring new types of wildfire
sensors the goal is to make something
that works essentially the same way
when exposed to infrared radiation a
liquid
inside a dome-shaped sensor expands
and in turn deforms a small membrane to
send a signal
early prototypes are not yet as
sensitive as the beetles pits but they
are inexpensive and will only get better
with time and that's great because more
sensitive and affordable sensors could
be a huge improvement to our existing
wildfire early warning systems
especially as forest fires become more
intense and widespread due to climate
change while the beetles might have the
best long-range fire detection in the
animal kingdom their short-range sensing
is
kind of mellowing compared to certain
snakes hit vipers get that name
from the pair of heat-sensing pit organs
below their
eyes and they're able to create an image
out of the infrared radiation they
detect this helps them accurately strike
at their prey
a feature especially useful when hunting
at night when lots of yummy small
animals are active the pit organs work
like a second pair of eyes except that
they see heat instead of light
each pit has a sensory membrane hanging
inside
with several thousand heat sensitive
protein channels embedded in it and
these channels
are super sensitive they open up for
temperature differences of just a couple
thousandths of a degree
which is important when your phrase fur
or feathers are similar in temperature
to the surroundings when a channel opens
an electrical signal is sent to the
snake's brain the pattern of signals is
mapped and processed to form an image
much like how you and i see because
our brains can interpret signals from
our retinas though the snake's infrared
image is not as high definition still
engineers are hoping to recreate both
the extreme sensitivity to heat
and the image forming aspects of the
viper's pits just
without the living tissue bit so they're
working on developing more flexible
pyroelectric materials
substances capable of turning a heat
signal into electricity we already have
hard crystalline materials that do this
but developing a supple membrane
version would open up a wider variety of
applications
like better search and rescue robots
that can see infrared as well as the
snakes
that way they could find people whose
heat signature is being obscured by snow
or smoke but not all of the tech being
inspired by infrared sensing animals is
aiming to detect heat what researchers
are learning from bats
could teach us more about brains i know
that this sounds like it might be a leap
but bear with me you see pit vipers are
not the only vertebrates that use
infrared radiation to locate prey
vampire bats also possess this ability
it comes in super handy for them when
it's dinner time because they feed
solely on warm mammal blood and it's
hard to do that if you can't tell where
that blood actually is
so much like pit vipers they have heat
sensing pits in their faces but they use
a different protein channel and it's
actually the same one that humans use
to detect burning hot temperatures and
spicy foods typically these channels are
activated by temperatures over 43
degrees celsius but inside the
leaf-shaped pits adorning their noses
vampire bats have super sensitive
versions that respond to temperatures
around 30 degrees celsius and it's those
proteins that researchers are interested
in because they could improve upon a
neuroscience technique known as
thermogenetics the basic idea here is
that neurons are turned on and off when
ion channels
open or close so if thanks to genetic
engineering you give certain neurons
channels that can be opened and closed
at will you can flip them on and off
to see what those neurons do in the
brain now neuroscientists
already do this with light as there are
special channels that can be opened or
closed
with certain wavelengths but
thermogenetics aims to use
infrared and other kinds of long wave
radiation instead
since they are able to penetrate tissue
a lot
better than visible light and that could
open up whole new avenues of study
as right now getting the light into the
dark recesses of an animal's brain
is you know tricky to say the least
that's why they're excited by the
special channels in vampire bats
they may be just the thing to take
thermogenetics to the next level
it's clear that for all these animals
their super infrared detectors are
evolutionary gifts
which have allowed them to do incredible
things and now they are proving to be
gifts
to the scientific community as well
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