What’s more terrifying than grabbing a tree branch
and realizing it’s a snake?
It has got to be this flying snake heading
straight for your face.
Found in the forests of South and Southeast Asia,
the flying snake is the only known
limbless vertebrate that can fly.
Trust in me, and I’ll bring you the answers.
wow that was creepier than I planned.
Sorry guys.
There are five known species of Chrysopelea
or flying snakes, and four of them can flatten their
bodies into a ribbon-like wing and glide between trees.
Flying snakes can grow to about 1.2 m (4 ft) long.
They eat birds, lizards and other small animals.
But you will never find this type of snake on the ground,
making them harder to spot.
Their name is a bit misleading as they aren’t really flying.
They're gliding through the air. And their flight speed and
travel distance depend on
how high a branch they launch from.
The longest distance a flying snake can glide
is about 7 m (23 ft). That happens when
it’s launching from a height of 75 m (246 ft).
And the fastest it can speed along is 10 m/s ( 33 ft/s).
An elongated, tube-like body is not ideal for flying.
So to get airborne, a flying snake rotates its ribs
forward and backward to flatten itself out.
It's kind of like how a cobra opens up its hood.
This allows the snake to ride the air
and use gravity for acceleration.
If you were lucky enough to see a flying snake up close,
you’d notice that as the middle of its body flattens,
it gets twice as wide.
You might even see the bump of its heart under its skin.
Sometimes, you can even see undigested food lumps
sticking out of its flat middle.
But the tail remains rounded to get a good grip
on the branch it’s about to launch off.
This is its usual launching-off position.
From here, the flying snake plunges
the front of its body downward.
Its head starts arcing upwards
and its belly faces the side.
It soars up and forward to rise above the branch.
Reaching out into the air and arcing away from the branch,
the snake will finally release
its grip and swerve its belly 90°
toward the ground. This snake is now airborne.
But sometimes, a flying snake skips this artful launch-off.
When fleeing a predator, it will slither sideways
and nose-dive straight off the branch.
Cant say I blame them.
But this type of takeoff doesn’t let the snake travel
too far and makes for a wonky flight.
And then there is the challenge of staying airborne.
To do this, the flying snake seems to
be tapping into its basic reptilian instincts.
It slithers through the air
like its cousins would on the ground.
But it doesn’t just undulate on a horizontal axis.
It also makes small waves on a vertical plane
throughout its body, making more stable flights
over much longer distances.
But why go through all this effort to fly?
No one is entirely sure why these snakes took to the air.
But if the behavior of other gliding animals
is any indication, it's likely just a
matter of catching prey,
escaping predators and good old common sense.
I mean, if you’re a tree-dweller, you’re better off
learning to glide between the treetops.
That’s way more efficient than climbing
all the way up and down trees.
But could you get killed in a venomous snake air raid?
Of all the species of flying snakes, C. ornata
is the only one temperamental enough to
strike at anything that moves.
But no flying snakes have ever killed a human.
People bitten by flying snakes report mild symptoms like
pain, drowsiness or headaches
and usually recover fully within days.
And luckily, there have been no instances
of flying snakes
landing on human faces or other body parts.
If anything, the snake stands to lose its teeth
and get an infection from biting a human
But these fascinating creatures have triggered
scientific innovation.
The flying snake’s movement mechanics
are inspiring the design of insect-sized drones.
And robotics engineers are studying the flying snake’s
combination of horizontal and vertical undulation
to help them build robots that can climb
through rubble and up the sides of buildings.
This could help search and rescue operations.
If you haven't slithered away at the thought of these snakes
flying at you, watch our episode about
how pythons eat their prey whole.
You won't believe what this python swallowed.
Flattening their bodies and gliding through the air
is what flying snakes do.
And that’s why they’re Crazy Creatures.