Eyelash Viper Deadly 60 Bites

'On Deadly 60 I've had loads of incredible animal encounters.

'Here's just one of my many favourites.

'This is Deadly 60 Bites.'

This is the wonderful eyelash pit viper.

'It might look pretty relaxed coiled around this flower,

'but this Costa Rican snake is a high-speed hunter,

'and I want to show you it in action.'

Even if you're someone who hates snakes, you'd have to admit

that that is a really beautiful animal.

But they're also very highly-adapted hunters.

And the clue to that is in their name. Pit vipers.

That doesn't mean, as I thought when I was a kid, that they live in pits.

Actually what it's talking about

is a tiny pit that they have between their nostril and their eye

which is incredibly sensitive at picking up heat.

Typical food for the eyelash pit viper

would be something like a small mouse,

perhaps a bat, they'll even catch hummingbirds on the wing.

The core body temperature of a bird or a small mammal

is around about 38 degrees.

So what I've got here is a balloon filled with hot water

that's almost exactly that temperature.

I'm going to move it in, close to the viper,

and hopefully I'll get it to strike towards the balloon.

Here, we've got our mini-cam set up and ready to record at high speed.

That means that we should see the strike slowed right down,

and be able to really appreciate quite how awesome it is.

Right, let's give it a go.

Let's see what happens.

HE LAUGHS

That was amazing.

What do you reckon, Nick? You think you got it?

Yeah, definitely. Let's see, let's see.

Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

Saw the mouth open almost so it was fully wide like that.

Almost so it was creating a stabbing kind of shape

rather than a downward strike.

And the fangs were almost used like daggers to pierce into the balloon.

That was amazing.

Can I have another go? Is it all right?!

Can I have another go?! Definitely. I could do this all day!

That's so perfect, you can just see it re-setting itself at the end.

Just setting the jaw back, letting the fang come back into position.

That's incredible, absolutely incredible.