Posted on 11/23/2010 11:08:59 AM PST by markomalley
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.
Enough with all these Pelosi threads!
if Pelosi’s face skin were allowed to assume it’s natural, unBotoxed state, she too could glide like a flying squirrel.
Suspect something similar to the way birds and dolphins ride a wake.
Why? So they can get the TSA goons to frisk the snakes before they fly?!?!
No, not enough curves.
How about funding a study on Snakes in the Oval Office?
I already know how these snakes fly and by what method they are able to glide from place to place.
They use Air Force 1 to do it. Once in a while they use a helicopter but that is for getting them to closer locations.
Now they can just send me a few million and we’ll call it a day.
A myopic person never sees where he is going. If you personally can't see the objective, that does not mean the objective is not worthy.
"...as the country's economy is sinking due to government debt!"
Where did this jewel come from? Firstly, the economy is not sinking: it is growing slowly. And, secondly, this is happening not because of any size of the government debt but because of structural (socialist) problems we have.
Most of research we have been doing for the last 2400 or so years was not limited to describing phenomena but aimed at understanding them.
Has it occurred to you that the Internet you are now using had been created by the same organization?
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