When snakes fly
A gliding snake gets some lift by spreading its ribs
By Susan Milius
A snake jumping out a window looks nothing like a paper airplane.
Few snakes do anything but fall, but the paradise flying snake widens and flattens its body as if trying to catch some lift. And instead of holding a straight Superman pose, it undulates and whips S-curves in the air in a 3-D motion people don’t have a word for. “Just watch the video,” says biomechanist Jake Socha of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg.