Snakes can fly? Of course they can and researchers figured out how, study shows
Still no word on pigs flying, but a new study now details how snakes can glide through the air.
The journal Nature Physics published the article “Undulation enables gliding in flying snakes,” which explains howsnakes like the Chrysopelea Paradisi, or the paradise tree snake, can launch itself into flight from the trees of South and Southeast Asia, NPR reported.
Just as a snake slithers on the ground in an “S” motion, they use the same movement, called “undulation” to propel themselves from tree to tree, according to the study.
While they’re commonly referred to as “flying snakes” that’s not quite what they’re doing, the New York Times reported. The snakes glide or strategically fall from one branch to another dozens of feet away, at a speed of about 25 mph, according to NYT.
The researchers recorded the movements of seven snakes with high-speed cameras and motion-capture tags. They recorded the snakes moving from a height of 8.3 meters, or four stories, in an “indoor glide arena” 36 times, according to the study.
“It happens really quickly,” Isaac Yeaton, a mechanical engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, told NPR. “And it’s hard to see all the detail by eye. So that’s why we need high speed cameras and high speed motion capture.”
The trials showed the snakes use two different wave motions: “a large-amplitude horizontal wave and a newly discovered smaller-amplitude vertical wave, both of which travel down the body from the head to the vent in a consistent manner,” the study says.
The snake jumps and then flattens its body, which allows it to transform it into “wing,” according to the study.
The researchers observed some flying snakes in Singapore jump from 30 feet high and land 60 feet away despite the lack of wind, NYT reported.
“It was like an athlete hitting its stride,” Dr. John Socha, one of the study’s researchers and a professor of biomedical engineering and mechanics at Virginia Tech, told NYT. “It was like, ‘I know what I’m doing, I’m off and you’ll never see me again.”
One question the researchers had was whether the snakes were moving in a serpentine for functional purposes or if it was just because the snake was used to moving this way, NPR reported. But they found through computer modeling that without the undulations, the snakes would fall, according to NPR.
The new information could help researchers “provide the theoretical basis for design of a bioinspired flying snake robot that glides using aerial undulation,” the study said.
“I hope that before the end of my life that we do have a search-and-rescue robot based on flying snakes,” Dr. Socha told NYT.