Nov. 23, 2010 Five related species of tree-dwelling snakes found
in Southeast and South Asia may just be the worst nightmares of
ophidiophobes (people who have abnormal fears of snakes). Not
only are they snakes, but they can "fly" -- flinging themselves
off their perches, flattening their bodies, and gliding from
tree to tree or to the ground. To Virginia Tech biologist Jake
Socha, these curious reptiles are something of a biomechanical
wonder. In order to understand how they do what they do, Socha
and his colleagues recently studied Chrysopelea paradisi snakes
as they launched themselves off a branch at the top of a
15-meter-tall tower. Four cameras recorded the curious snakes as
they glided. This allowed them to create and analyze 3-D
reconstructions of the animals' body positions during flight --
work that Socha recently presented at the American Physical
Society Division of Fluid Dynamics (DFD) meeting in Long Beach,
CA. The reconstructions were coupled with an analytical model of
gliding dynamics and th