Speaker 1: Welcome to Brainstuff, a production of iHeartRadio, Hey brain Stuff
Speaker 1: learn volabah here. Flying animals are common, but not particularly diverse. Birds, bats, insects,
Speaker 1: and pterosaurs, being the extinct relatives of dinosaurs that had
Speaker 1: complex wing membranes, are the only four groups of organisms
Speaker 1: that have ever evolved the ability to fly. But what
Speaker 1: about the so called flying snake. These reptiles can't actually fly.
Speaker 1: They more fall with style allah buzz light year. They
Speaker 1: can glide over long horizontal distances despite their lack of wings.
Speaker 1: There are five known species of snakes within the flying
Speaker 1: snake genus. The smallest is the banded flying snake, which
Speaker 1: measures in it just two feet long or about sixty centimeters.
Speaker 1: The biggest species, called the ornate flying snake, can get
Speaker 1: up to four feet long that's one and a half meters.
Speaker 1: Rounding out this little quintet are the Paradise tree snake,
Speaker 1: the Moluccan flying snake, and the Indian flying snake. These
Speaker 1: creatures are tree dwellers that live in the rainforests of
Speaker 1: South and Southeast Asia. Being gliders and not true flyers,
Speaker 1: they don't produce thrust when they go airborne. This renders
Speaker 1: them incapable of traveling upwards through the air. Gliders are
Speaker 1: actually really common in Asia's southeastern rainforests. These ecosystems include
Speaker 1: gliding squirrels, gliding frogs, and various gliding lizards. Biologists don't
Speaker 1: know what makes the trait so widespread there, but it
Speaker 1: might have something to do with a family of large
Speaker 1: trees that's common in the area, the terracarps. These trees
Speaker 1: can grow some two hundred feet tall that's about sixty meters.
Speaker 1: The lower halves of their trunks are pretty much branchless,
Speaker 1: which is a huge inconvenience for tree climbing animals. It's
Speaker 1: possible that all of these unrelated critters evolved the ability
Speaker 1: to glide as a way of getting from tree top
Speaker 1: to tree top more easily. It sure beats scampering up
Speaker 1: and down limbless trunks all day, especially when you're a
Speaker 1: snake with nothing to enable scampering. Flying snakes have somewhat
Speaker 1: mysterious habits out in the wild. For the article this
Speaker 1: episode is based on how Stuff Works. Spoke via email
Speaker 1: with herpetologist Jake Soka. He said, we actually don't know
Speaker 1: why they glide. There are no studies that address the
Speaker 1: topic I've been interested for years, but anecdotally I have
Speaker 1: seen them use it for escape from me and other people,
Speaker 1: and it's also possible and likely that they use it
Speaker 1: for effect of locomotion to move to another tree or
Speaker 1: to the ground in a short time, or to avoid
Speaker 1: slithering over substrates where they could encounter a predator. A
Speaker 1: professor at Virginia Tech with ay focus on the biomechanics
Speaker 1: of animals, Soca, has been studying these snakes for over
Speaker 1: two decades and has co authored several papers about their
Speaker 1: burial antics. Flying snakes are particularly interesting because they're the
Speaker 1: only animal with no limbs that also glides. When a
Speaker 1: flying snake launches itself off of some tree or other
Speaker 1: elevated surface, its ribs splay outwards, flattening the animal from
Speaker 1: neck to nether regions. The process helps the snakes create
Speaker 1: lift and upward acting physical force that airplanes take advantage
Speaker 1: of by making their bodies more aerodynamic. What this does
Speaker 1: to their internal organs is another mystery, but the method
Speaker 1: gets results. Flying snakes have been seen gliding across horizontal
Speaker 1: distances of over three hundred feet that's one hundred meters.
Speaker 1: Flying snakes do undulate in a slithering motion while they glide,
Speaker 1: which begs an interesting question. Do they do this because
Speaker 1: it helps the gliding process somehow, or is it just
Speaker 1: a useless habit, a behavioral relic of slithering over solid surfaces.
Speaker 1: Soka and his fellow researchers observed seven paradise tree snakes
Speaker 1: gliding in a controlled indoor environment, specifically a four story
Speaker 1: black box theater at Virginia Tech. Using high speed cameras
Speaker 1: and motion capture tech, they broke down the choreography of
Speaker 1: the glide that in turn allowed them to build a
Speaker 1: three D digital model of the reptiles. They found that
Speaker 1: a flying snake will undulate both horizontally and vertically while
Speaker 1: it glides. Simulations with the three D model show that
Speaker 1: this complex form of slithering keeps the snakes stable and
Speaker 1: on course during their airborne trecks. Earlier studies had revealed
Speaker 1: that flying snakes can change direction mid glide, and learned
Speaker 1: that they'll often dangle from a tree limb and twist
Speaker 1: the fronts of their bodies into a distinct J shaped
Speaker 1: loop right before taking off. Flying snakes belong to the
Speaker 1: biggest family of modern serpents, the colibrids, along with everything
Speaker 1: from corn snakes to garter snakes to kingsnakes. The flying
Speaker 1: snakes are mildly venomous, but not dangerous to humans. Their
Speaker 1: fixed rear fangs will make a bite swell a bit,
Speaker 1: but the it's the absolute worst. The creatures are die
Speaker 1: neural hunting birds, bats, lizards, and frogs. In broad daylight,
Speaker 1: flying snakes slither up tree trunks to the highest branches,
Speaker 1: using their entire body to grab a hold of bark
Speaker 1: and other rough surfaces on the trunk. None of the
Speaker 1: five known species are deemed endangered, though herpetologists have expressed
Speaker 1: a bit of concern about how the banded flying might
Speaker 1: be faring these days. And this is where I wish
Speaker 1: we weren't an audio only podcast. The next time you
Speaker 1: have a chance, look up video of flying snakes. They
Speaker 1: are weird and beautiful. Today's episode is based on the
Speaker 1: article the flying snake doesn't fly so much as fall
Speaker 1: with style on how Stuffworks dot Com, written by Mark Mancini.
Speaker 1: Brain Stuff is production of ByHeart Radio in partnership with
Speaker 1: how Stuffworks dot Com and is produced by Tyler Klang.
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