Reptiles · Squamata · Colubridae

Garden Flying Snake

Chrysopelea paradisi

Least Concern

The species is abundant and widely distributed; it faces no significant short-term risk. See full glossary

Chrysopelea paradisi is an arboreal snake of the family Colubridae native to South-East Asia, able to glide and to turn in the air to reach different positions in the canopy. Jake Socha, a biomechanist, discovered that this species can splay its ribs and flatten itself to increase the width of its body, up to double, and so improve the efficiency of its glide.

Size

1 m – 1.2 m

Lifespan

10 years

Diet

Carnivore

Feeds mainly on other animals.

Activity

Diurnal

Active mainly during the day.

Social structure

Solitary

Lives and hunts alone, joining others only to breed.

Sighting difficulty

Easy

RainforestCarnivore Diurnal Solitary Reptile Rainforest

14countries 20parks17same family

Fun facts

GeneralIt launches into the air, flattens its body and glides between trees as far as 20 m.
locomociónIt can flatten its body into a sort of concave wing to glide between trees, one of the few snakes capable of controlled travel through the air.
It is one of the very few snakes in the world able to glide: it flattens its body to double its width, forming a concave section that acts as a wing, and undulates in the air throughout the flight.
That undulation is not a leftover from crawling: it is essential for staying stable, and aerodynamic models have shown that without it the snake would immediately go into a spin.
NASA and several robotics laboratories have studied its flight in order to design gliders without rigid wings, and it is one of the most frequently cited cases of biomimetics of the last decade.