Slashdot Mirror
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."
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.)
for the link to quicktime. I've been looking all over for that...
OK... I hated snakes BEFORE they could fly.
*shudder*
$0.02 (CDN)
But that server is going down like a stone...
I stole this Sig
so much as plummet."
-Monty Python
(Ok, it was sheep. but after watching those videos, I think it fits.)
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Badgerbadgerbadgerbadger...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Just wait till you see the one's that can swallow a man whole.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
The secret to flying is throwing yourself at the ground and missing. Full quote
Amazing how familiar this seems. Almost as if it had been on Slashdot yesterday.
"Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?"
CC Licensed Serialized Story and Podcast: Ingenioustries
...that no-one ever decides to cross one of these things with a cobra...
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
I tought that this was supposed to be an howto. What am I to do with the snake and dead pigeons now?
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life: And thou shalt fling thyself from trees in a pathetic attempt at flying, and thou shalt hurtle towards the earth faster than thou canst say, "Holy Crap!", and men shall laugh and point fingers and cry out, O, silly snakey pooh! Erm, "paraphrased" from Gen 3:14
'Flying Snake Howto' pfft.
I was all pumped up for a meat-modding exerciose that told me how to convert my existing snake into a flying one with cool neons and shit.
It's just a stupid science article.
Flying snake - looks like more of a controlled fall.
Flying Squirrel - not really flying, but one hell of a long jump.
Flying Fish - Really, truly looks like it's flying. It's not just an extra-long jump.. they litereally glide over the water, just like a bird flying low.. for up to 100m. I've seen them in person, it's insane.
Therefore I declare that the flying fish is the only one that really deserves the name.
Yeah, so they didn't fly, but we have Flying Squirrels who do vaguely the same thing, and I'm sure a lizard or two who do the same.
Basically they sensationalized it. It should be called Gliding Snakes. However, who'd want to read about gliding snakes? Nobody, that's who. Flying Snakes, otoh, are a whole different game!
You might have seen a housefly, maybe even a superfly, but I bet you ain't never seen a snake fly!
Seeing snakes trying to fly, or seeing humans running *towards* them like their life depended on it.
"Is this just useless, or is it expensive as well?"
Well... in World of Warcraft they do exist according to this screen capture. [grin]
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Personally I doubt that you had a lot of snakes falling out of trees and going splat. This seems nearly as naive an interpretation of evolution as Lamark's.
:-)
Instead, I suspect that you have a situation like this: when the equalibrium is punctuated it fundamentally changes the environmental niches which are available. For example, if oyu have a drought, this changes the niches that the animals are forced to occupy. If oyu have a mass extinction, you have a lot of vacant niches, etc. If you have a year of abundance, niches get subdivided, etc.
I suspect that a group of snakes found themselves in a situation where they were able to live off the lizards in the trees and decided to stay there. If they fell, it probably hurt, but I doubt it was often lethal. However, those that could control their angle of descent would have had an advantage evolutionarily based on this control simply because it takes a lot of energy to climb back up the trees, one is more vulnerable, etc. So it is a series of very small steps not a couple of big ones. But these steps occur over a comparitively short time period. And lo and behold, the snakes fly
As a say, natural selection is the process of adapting a species to an ecological niche. The evolution seems rapid at first, but once things are stabilized, you don't see much.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
nuf sed
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Because then:
1. A lot of beautiful women would owe me sex.
2. Cleveland would win the World Series.
3. My boss would make me a vice president.
4. My dotcom options would be valid and profitable.
5. Slashdot posters would be lucid and intelligible.
6. George Lucas would retire the StarWars franchise.
7. Microsoft would GPL their entire code base.
8. SCO would fully support OSS once again.
9. The RIAA/MPAA would make financial restitution to all their victims.
10. ???
11. Profit-...! Umm, where was I again?
Solomon Kevin Chang
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Stupid flight cancellations...
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
I think it was on Discovery Channel I saw it, but they had snakes in a zero gravity plane (vomit comet). I believe they were trying to see if snakes would know which was was "up" during the free fall and level themselves off. Most snakes tumbled out of control, a few managed to "glide".
I've found that anything flies if you throw it hard enough.
A few random comments about these postings:
o ns.html -- there are many more details about the snakes' trajectories, particularly in the latest papers (2005).
Regarding the mirror of my site--thanks. The was so much traffic this weekend that the server was brought down. When I called the company, they said, "So YOU'RE the problem here..."
Gliding is a form of flight in which the flier can only move downward. Thrust is required to move upward. As was suggested, it would be very interesting to learn if a flying snake generates thrust (though not enough to overcome its weight).
I actually tried to use a contrasting sheet on the ground to improve the visuals, but the snakes would have none of it--they would glide anywhere but there. They have good vision, and seemed to prefer natural settings. I spent countless hours squinting while analyzing video, trying to make out white spots on a green and black snake against the green grass.
"Ultra light bones" The paradise tree snake is better gliders than its cousin the golden tree snake, and the paradise tree snake on the whole is less robust. I would like to test the idea that its bone structure is different (particularly, thinner-walled), but I haven't gotten to that yet. Similarly to many scientists, I have a long list of things I'd like to work on...
Regarding the "does it really" line of questioning: all gliders take a curved trajectory. At the end of the trajectory, the glider is moving at a shallower angle than at the beginning. For some of my snakes, they reached a glide angle of 13 degrees from the horizon. Not anywhere as good as a bird (2-4 degrees) or a man-made glider (even better), but impressive for an animal that in reality is a cylinder. I also suggest you look at some of the publications at http://www.flyingsnake.org/publications/publicati
-Jake Socha