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Flying Snake Mysteries Revealed
Rambo Tribble writes "Researchers from Virginia Tech are reporting they have uncovered the secrets behind the genus Chrysopelea's aerodynamic feats . These ophidians are capable of gliding some distance while appearing to slither through the air. The BBC's article on the revelations hosts a short video of the phenomenon. At the heart of Chrysopelea's feat is a remarkable ability of the snakes to alter their body's cross-section. Finally, snakes that don't need to be on no stinking plane." The paper [PDF] has some more cool pictures, too.
Like it or not, pictures are still a more efficient way of communicating data than text. By an order of magnitude. Also, cool snake pictures!
Herodotus in his History mentioned flying snakes in Arabia/Egypt. Many considered it one of the more fanciful tales in that work.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
What has /. turned into? Discovery Kids?
All geeks are kids at heart.
Where once we openly drooled at the view through the candy store window, we now drool at the view through the gadget store window (or web site).
We also still like to see what makes things tick.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Like it or not, pictures are still a more efficient way of communicating data than text. By an order of magnitude.
You've lost me on that...can you show me a graph?
I remember hearing this same story (regarding flattening of the body) already in the 90s.
The test they did suggested the snake's cross-sectional shape was more efficient than many other airfoil designs. This could have applications in aircraft design.
No, that's a relative clause, not a full sentence. "that don't need to be on the plane" serves only as an adjective for "snakes".
The independent sentence, without the relative clause, is "Finally, snakes." The primary verb is implied: "Finally, [there are] snakes." Or maybe "Finally, [we have] snakes." Or something similar.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
sure! how bout a bar graph...
Efficiency of Medium
text ##################
pics ########
As God is my witness, I thought those things could fly.
No brain, no pain.
Yeah, who wants pictures? Here's a video of the snake in action: http://www.nbcnews.com/science...
It's really uncanny to see it suddenly going from a free fall into a glide that looks to be on par with what we'd expect from a paper airplane. And later in the video they show it actually pulling off a turn as well, which is even more insane to consider. Jumping from a tree in the forest, I could easily see this thing traveling quite a way.