Flying Snake Schools Scientists

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a… flying snake?!

The Department of Defense has a new interest in herpetology, now that it has learned of the powers hidden by a select group of Asian snakes.

The snakes can travel from the tips of the highest trees (almost 200 feet high) – to a landing point up to 780 feet away.

That’s a lot of mileage for a creature without wings!

As per The Washington Post, in order to discover the complexity behind the serpents’ secrets, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded the research of Virginia Tech biologist John Socha, who had studied and filmed the snakes in their native habitats.

So how do they fly?

According to Socha, whose initial research was sponsored by the National Geographic Society, the snakes basically turn into one big wing.

In a recently published paper within a scientific journal, Socha and his colleagues wrote, "Of any terrestrial animal glider, snakes exhibit the greatest active movements, which may affect their trajectory dynamics. We launched 'flying' snakes from a 15-meter tower and recorded the mid-to-end portion of trajectories with four video cameras to reconstruct the snakes' body position."

"The snake is very active in the air, and you can kind of envision it as having multiple segments that become multiple wings," Socha said. "The leading edge becomes the trailer, and then the trailer becomes the leading edge."

There of course practical applications that can be drawn from figuring out how the snakes work, but Socha insisted that DARPA was more "interested in it from a basic science view, with potential applications a secondary consideration."

I’m okay with all of this flying snakes business, as long as cobras and black mambas don’t figure it out.

And no one tell Samuel L. Jackson. I don’t need to see a sequel to Snakes on a Plane.