This is scientific American 60 second science. I'm Christopher Intagiyata.

One of the most exquisite heat sensors in the world, it's not in some government lab.

It's in the head of a snake, the pit viper to be specific.

They're incredibly sensitive.

They beat any of the, I would say, synthetic counterparts, even the most expensive

semiconducting systems used, for example,

in infrared or thermal cameras today.

Kara DeRillo, a material scientist at Caltech.

They can effectively resolve few few milli-kelvin of temperature changes at the distance of up to a meter.

Now De Rio and our colleagues have designed a heat sensing material that competes with the sensitivity of the snake using

Pectin, same stuff you used to thicken jam.

Pectin, which is a double stranded molecule that's ubiquitously present on the outer cell wall of

plant cells acts effectively as a tiny molecular temperature sensor.

When temperatures go up, she says,

a double stranded molecule unzips.

Like the zipper of a jacket.

So they did what you usually do with Pectin.

They made jelly, using Pectin, water, and calcium ions. They dried that out and got a thin

transparent film. Then they had to test it, which they realized they could do using a

microwave and her son's Teddy Bear.

Which can be heated up to a temperature of 37 degrees, roughly the temperature, for example

of a mouse or a running prey for a snake.

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