Coiled for take-off: how flying snakes glide

Flying snakes glide through the air, flattening their bodies to provide lift. But as they glide they seem to… ‘swim’, undulating their bodies from side to side.

In this video, a team in the United States explains how they used motion-capture technology to study snake-gliding in precise detail. Their models reveal that undulation is vital for the snake’s stability as they glide from branch to branch.

View the original video here.

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