Howto - Flying Snakes

Ant writes "Wired News' Furthermore mentions a University of Chicago researcher finally figured out exactly how the limbless reptiles pull off their amazingly effective bird imitations. 'Despite their lack of winglike appendages, flying snakes are skilled aerial locomotors,' said biologist Jake Socha. Here's how: First, they flatten their bodies from head to tail, making themselves 'Frisbee-like in form,' Socha said. Then, as the snake drops (or leaps!) from a tree branch, it sends S-shaped waves through its body, steadying itself as it glides through the air. One species can even turn mid-flight. There is more information, photographs, and even short QuickTime video clips on Jake's Flying Snakes Home Page."

Comments

Mirror

[daveschroeder]

Mirror of the flying snake "takeoff" and "gliding" videos.

(The author has also stated "You may use this video footage for non-publishing purposes without permission" on his web page. Not sure how much load it can handle, so I figured I'd mirror it. The author's page has more information and commentary; these are just the raw videos. They're very small, so there's a good chance his server could have handled it just fine.)

Re:Wheres the flying part?

[flyingsquid]

There are two groups of flying squirrel, true flying squirrels and the independently evolved scaly-tailed flying "squirrels" in Africa. There are also the bat-like "flying lemurs" or colugos, and three different genera of gliding possum in Australia, each representing an independent origin of gliding. At least four lizards have evolved gliding: the geckos _Cosymbotus_ and _Ptychozoon_ (Kuhl's Gecko), the gliding lizard _Draco_, and another called _Holaspis_. Plus gliding has evolved at least four times in tree frogs, once or more in the flying fish, and perhaps most remarkable of all, there's the flying squid: they can spread their mantle fins and the web between their limbs as they jet out of the water, and glide over the waves.

Flying snakes, however, differ from all of these in one rather interesting way: they will actually move the airfoil while airborne, and appear to be swimming through the air. What's interesting is that the glide angle gets shallower when they do this. This suggests three possibilities: (1) this behavior reduces drag, (2) this behavior increases lift, or (3) this behavior produces thrust.

The last would be really interesting: if flying snakes can actually produce thrust while airborne (even if they can't develop enough thrust for horizontal flight), then they would be only the fifth animal group (alongside insects, pterosaurs, bats, and birds) to evolve true powered flight.