Double Vision

As a kid growing up in the rolling hills of central Georgia, Michael Grace loved to walk around with a pocket full of snakes.

"Most Inflatable Air Dance people were terrified of them," including his mom, which made life around the Grace home a little awkward at times, he says all these years later.

But to a kid in Georgia, that just made snakes all the more interesting.

As the years passed he turned his hobby into a profession. Now, he spends his time probing the world of snakes in his laboratory at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne.

The secrets he is learning from the fascinating reptiles that live in his lab could someday lead to major advancements in everything from heat seeking missiles for the military to tiny devices that might help physicians locate tumors in the human body.

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.