U.S. funds study of flying snakes

WASHINGTON, Nov. 23 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Defense is funding research to discover how species of Asian snakes are able to glide long distances through the air, researchers say.

Researchers at Virginia Tech are studying how snakes of the genus Chrysopelea, found in Southeast Asia, India and southern China, glide without the benefit of any wings or wing-like parts, The Washington Post reported Monday.

The snakes undulate from side to side, almost as if slithering through the air, to glide from the tops of 200-foot tall trees to land almost 800 feet away.

"Basically ... they become one long wing," John Socha, a Virginia Tech researcher who has studied and filmed the snake in Asia, says.

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

The National Geographic Society initially sponsored Socha's research, but his most recent work and paper were funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The agency researchers advanced military technologies of all kinds, and the physical dynamics of snake flight is of great interest to the agency, Socha says.