Flying Snakes Embody UFO For Their Ability to Glide From Tree to Tree

Scientists have published research revealing how the flying snake glides the through the air like a Frisbee.

According to LiveScience, the flying snake earns its name by forming itself into the shape of a flying saucer and hovers like a UFO. The study was published Wednesday in the Journal of Experimental Biology.

"The shape is unusual," study co-author Jake Socha, a biomechanics researcher at Virginia Tech, told LiveScience. "You never find this kind of shape in any other animal flyer; you don't find it in engineered flyers. We didn't know if that was a good shape to have."

The snake from Southeast Asia, scientifically named Chrysopelea paradise, will find a tree at least 50 feet above the ground before it wraps its tail around it and launches itself into the air, gliding to the next tree. Socha said the motion they make looks like they are swimming.

He said in a press release the snakes flex their ribs upon takeoff to change their body shape from a circle to a semicircle. The researchers printed a rod with a cross-section to match the snake's body using a 3-D printer. They placed the rod in a tank of water because, Socha said, water is a good indicator of airflow because it is denser and stickier.

While the snake could not compare to the gliding abilities of winged animals, it did do well against flying squirrels, lizards and other such animals. The researchers found that an airplane wing, when scaled all the way down to a snake's size, is actually similar. However, the snake at the size of the airplane wing is not nearly as aerodynamically effective.

"If you make a rough estimate of the lift to drag ratio for the real animal, it appears to do better than what we got from this study," Socha said in the release, indicating the research will continue. "So even though this shape produced more lift than we were expecting, it doesn't get us the glide performance that snakes can attain, giving us a hint that there is something in what the animal is doing aerodynamically that is not captured by the cross-sectional shape alone."