Thursday - April 24, 2014

Up, up, and away!!

This may be the last thing that anyone with a touch of ophidiophobia — fear of snakes — would want to hear: flying snakes have surprisingly good aerodynamic qualities.

Scientists studying the amazing gliding proficiency of an Asian species known as the paradise tree snake say it does two things as it goes airborne. It splays its ribs in order to flatten its profile from round into a more triangular form, and it undulates while airborne — sort of swimming through the air.
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The paradise tree snake is one of the world’s five species of flying snakes, all from the genus Chrysopelea. To be precise, they are gliders, not actual flyers like birds and bats that achieve powered flight.

The mildly venomous snake — green and black with occasional touches of red and orange — has a diameter roughly equal to a human finger and is up to three feet (one meter) long. It lives in rainforests in Southeast Asia and South Asia, including Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.

The snake takes to the air from trees, and is capable of gliding about 100 feet (30 meters).

Chrysopelea is also known by its common name “flying snake”. It climbs using ridge scales along its belly, pushing against rough bark surface of tree trunks, allowing it to move vertically up a tree. Upon reaching the end of a tree’s branch, the snake continues moving until its tail dangles from the branch’s end. It then makes a J-shape bend, leans forward to select the level of inclination it wishes to use to control its flight path, as well as selecting a desired landing area. Once it decides on a destination, it propels itself by thrusting its body up and away from the tree, sucking in its abdomen and flaring out its ribs to turn its body into a “pseudo concave wing”, all the while making a continual serpentine motion of lateral undulation parallel to the ground to stabilize its direction in midair in order to land safely.

The combination of sucking in its stomach and making a motion of lateral undulation in the air makes it possible for the snake to glide in the air, where it also manages to save energy compared to travel on the ground and dodge earth-bound predators. The concave wing that a snake creates in sucking in its stomach flattens its body to up to twice its width from the back of the head to the anal vent, which is close to the end of the snake’s tail, causes the cross section of the snake’s body to resemble the cross section of a frisbee or flying disc. When a flying disc spins in the air, the designed cross sectional concavity causes increased air pressure under the center of the disc, causing lift for the disc to fly. A snake continuously moves in lateral undulation to create the same effect of increased air pressure underneath its arched body to glide.[

Wiki says the critters can glide for 100 meters.

Upon lift off, the snake snake stretches out its ribs, instantly flattening the body and taking on an s shape. This action also causes the belly region of the snake to take on a concave shape that acts as a parachute. The snakes plan is to merely enlarge its surface area and increase air resistance, thus slowing its descent. During this period of flattening, the body expands to nearly double normal width. While aloft, the snake undulates and the body contorts to catch air drafts and glide. While the undulations help propel the snake, their true propose is to control the snakes direction. C. paradisi is unique among the flying snake species by the method it uses to change direction. Most species simply bank in the direction they wish to go. C. paradisi on the other hand, turns by moving the anterior portion of the snakes body. The reason as to why the this snake Genus evolved the ability to glide may be twofold; it could be an adaptation to avoid predation or it may have evolved in response to the two Genus’s of lizard and one Genus of frog prey items that also inhabit this area, the Genus Rhacophorus (Flying Frogs), Genus Draco (Flying Dragons or Gliding Lizards, and the Genus Ptychozoon (the Gliding Geckos).

As far as I could tell, the act of flying snakes hunting other flying reptiles while airborne has not yet been observed by Official Science. Could be it’s just a matter of time.

Flying snakes. They’re real. Next thing you know, it’ll turn out that Australia’s infamous Drop Bears are real too. Crivens.

Posted by Drew458     on 04/24/2014 at 12:18 PM   
Filed Under: • Animals • Fun-Stuff •  
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