|
Flying snakes Slithering through the air 飞蛇 空中滑行 Fancy aerodynamics explain why some snakes are good gliders 奇特的气体力学解释了为什么一些蛇善于飞行 MANY animals have mastered the trick of gliding through the forest canopy. Flying frogsstretch the webbing between the toes of their enlarged feet. Some lizards spread elongatedribs covered in flaps of skin. And the colugo, a strange South-East Asian mammal, can travelas much as 70 metres between trees by spreading a membrane of skin thatconnects its limbs. Despite a lack of obvious body parts that can double up as a decent pairof wings, some snakes, too, can glide for remarkable distances. 许多动物掌握在林冠中滑行的技巧。青蛙在飞行时展开它的脚蹼;一些蜥蜴展开皮肤软组织下的细长肋骨;猴猫，一种生长在东南亚的哺乳动物，通过伸展连接四肢的薄膜在树中滑行多达70米。尽管身体明显缺少一部分，如一对能够拍打且适于滑行的翅膀，一些蛇也能飞行很远。 To discover how snakes manage it Jake Socha of Virginia Tech and his colleagues conducted aseries of test flights with paradise tree snakes, a mildly venomous variety found in parts ofAsia. They launched the snakes from the top of a 15-metre tower and used four videocameras to construct 3-D images of the animals trajectories. The results, just published inBioinspiration and Biomimetics, show not only that flying snakes are surprisingly goodaviators but also that they employ some complex aerodynamic tricks. | 
