<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="1" > review</h1>
If a vertebrate wants to conquer the sky with its own body alone, it must sacrifice a pair of its own auxiliary limbs, that is, the two limbs inside the limbs to evolve into wings. Only three vertebrates in biological history have been able to fly freely: pterosaurs, birds, and bats.
Pterosaurs are extinct, and now the sky is dominated by birds and talents. Humans fly to the sky with the help of tools, so flying is not the original ability of humans, so we are not called flying animals. Of course, we are proud to be the only creature that can fly with our tools.
But there are some animals that have not evolved wings and can "fly" briefly, more precisely, glide. There are many animals in this category, spanning multiple species, such as mammals with squirrels, fish with flying fish in the sea, frogs with amphibians, flying lizards with reptiles, and so on.
This type of animal can not fly independently, must use the height difference to glide, we humans extreme sports wingsuit flight, is the use of bionic technology, imitate gliding animals. Although this is not a real flight, it does not affect the elegance of the gliding animals.
These gliding animals mentioned above have one thing in common, that is, the limbs are together, and a pair of auxiliary limbs have not evolved into wings, on the contrary, the skin begins to stretch in some parts of their bodies, such as the underarms of the weasel to the hind limbs of the skin membrane, and the frog has huge fins on the feet. They use these structures, called leather wings, to increase the area of contact with air.
If you were told that snakes can do it, it would be hard to believe. Snakes have no limbs, their whole body is bare, how to "fly"?
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="14" > "flying" goldenrod snake</h1>
This kind of snake that can "fly" is called the golden flower snake, which is distributed in the jungles of southern China and in the tropical rainforests of Southeast Asia.
The golden flower snake is not outstanding in the snake family, and the longest individual is only one meter and five meters. In people's minds, short snakes are very venomous, such as vipers. The golden flower snake is indeed poisonous, but it is okay to poison a small fish, shrimp and a small rat, and the poisonous person is no threat.
This is not to say that it can be safely allowed to bite people, although its poison is not enough to kill people, it is still okay to bite people, after all, it is poisonous fangs.
The "flying" of the golden flower snake is different from the flight of birds and bats, it has no wings, similar to the gliding animals mentioned above, that is, gliding in the forest, the golden flower snake is a genus, there are five species below, but there are only three kinds of real "flying", they are the golden flower snake, the heaven golden flower snake and the twin-spotted golden flower snake, these three kinds of golden flower snake have the ability to glide through the forest, like flying, people are called "flying snake".
Such a snake, not particularly bright-looking, does not have the ferocious venom of a cobra, does not have the stout body of a viper as a driver, and even the body length is not the leader of the snake family, how can it stand out in the snake family and become a "flying snake" that humans compete to observe and study?
It can only be said that among snakes, there is no shortage of mavericks.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="24" > how the golden flower snake "flies"</h1>
Like most gliders, the goldenrod cannot glide out of thin air, and it can only use the height difference from high to low.
At first, it had to hang itself in front of the branches, find a good angle to jump, and try to shrink its body and turn itself into a spring that holds energy.
Then jump, catapult out, after the body completely leaves the branch, compress their own body, the way is to open the ribs, let themselves become flat, like someone stepped on a foot into the "snake essence cake", while squashing their own body, in a continuous "S" shape.
Maintain the balance of the body during the taxiing process, and try to keep the head, body and tail in a flat surface. Finally reach your destination, hang up the branches, wrap themselves around the new branches and slip away.
The whole set of actions in one go, the clouds flowing, so that the people who see it all sigh, it is really wonderful, the original "flying snake" is not a legendary god beast, but a real existence in nature.
The golden flower snake lives in the dense jungle with its own pattern, and the picture of "flying" is very beautiful against the background of vegetation.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="38" > aerodynamic master</h1>
The golden flower snake is small in size and has no superfluous structure on its body, is it really just squashing its body to glide?
If nature is compared to martial arts, each animal must have a set of martial arts secrets to protect itself and dominate the martial arts. The martial arts cheats of arboreal animals are superb tree climbing skills, such as apes. Snakes are very suitable for crawling on trees because of their special body structure, but the golden flower snake sword takes a side and creates its own golden flower secret - aerodynamics.
We all think that the golden flower snake has a small cross-sectional area, even if it squashes the body, it has not become very wide, and there is a misunderstanding in the middle.
The golden flower snake is thin, but it also has a length of more than one meter, if you simply calculate the area, the total area of its flattened abdomen adds up, definitely not less than the skin wing area of other gliding animals. There is also that it will keep the whole body as far as possible on a horizontal plane, and all parts of its body are under force in the same space layer, essentially it supports itself with a "skin membrane".
In order to know the skill of the golden flower snake when "flying", several aeronautical engineers carefully observed it and repeated the test, and through computer simulations they concluded that the golden flower snake produced a suction force above its body during the process of "flying".
The golden flower snake will squash its body before "flying", and since the snake is a vertebrate, no matter how it squashes itself, its back will always be a little higher than its abdomen, that is, it has a bulge on its back.
During the glide, the air flow does not flow flat through its back, and when the air flows through the bulge, many small air flow vortexes are formed, and it is these vortexes that provide suction and allow the golden flower snake to "fly".
The golden flower snake also twists its body during its glide, and at first people thought it was driving itself to its destination, and the aerospace engineers thought it was most likely the snake's habitual movement.
After the observation and modeling of experts, finally restored a test of the golden flower snake model, in this process engineers found that the golden flower snake swing body is actually to maintain balance, it can "fly" without twisting, but in this process it will flip and fight, will fall faster, the golden flower snake continuous "S" shaped twisting, in order to make itself more stable, improve the "flight" accuracy.
Jim Underwood of University College London explains this phenomenon by the fact that real-life snakes, whether living on the ground or in water, move forward by bending their bodies, which makes snakes as silky as eating Dove, and even rough environments can flash around.
The golden flower snake twisting its body in the air has the possibility of enhancing stability, and in other cases, the snake almost achieves stability through this method, so the assumption that the swing is the habitual action of the snake is also true, so he believes that both statements are reasonable.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="57" > why the goldenrod chose "fly"</h1>
As the only member of the free gliding army without limbs, the Golden Flower Snake masters the core technology aerodynamics, allowing itself to travel freely through the dense forest. But why did the skinny golden snake choose to move itself in this way without limbs, without leather wings?
The characteristics of any living creature are the result of long-term natural selection, and the golden flower snake also follows this law.
Snakes are reptiles, have no constant body temperature, and are extremely susceptible to the influence of the climate, so the vast majority of snakes live in warm areas. The golden flower snake lives in the jungles of Southeast Asia, where it is not surprising that it has abundant rain and long sunshine hours, and the vegetation is tall and dense, and the towering trees are more than ten meters.
The golden flower snake is 1 to 1.5 meters long, if it climbs down from the tree and then climbs to another tree every time, it is not only time-consuming, but also extremely vulnerable to ground predators, in this case, choosing to jump from one tree to another tree is an efficient method, so in the natural evolution of millions of years, the golden flower snake has continuously improved its "flying" system, and finally become the veritable "flying snake" today.
This "flight" can not only shorten the time for the Golden Flower Snake to move, but also quickly escape when encountering predators, or launch a move to "fall from the sky" when it sees prey.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="66" > enlightenment to mankind</h1>
Humans are the most eager creatures to fly, as early as ancient times, our ancestors have fantasized about growing wings to fly, and countless civilizations have worshipped flying gods. With the rise of the Industrial Revolution, people also began to gradually go to the sky, from the initial paragliding, to the later airships, the Wright brothers' planes, and now the space shuttle, spaceship.
In addition, wingsuit flying, gliding and landing have also become people's pastime, and every year there are well-known manufacturers to sponsor the competition.
Human gliding is a membrane structure that mimics the squirrel and flying lizard, and due to the lack of previous research on the golden flower snake, no one has tried to imitate the golden flower snake to make new gliding equipment.
Now people have simulated the "flight" of the golden snake through computer technology, which is a new way of gliding, giving people a revelation, that is, it can be glided without a wide paraglider, using aerodynamics to create an air vortex above to use this suction force.
This can solve a thorny problem now, whether it is the aircraft take-off or paragliding start, it must be carried out in a very spacious environment, the purpose is to ensure safety, the wings of the aircraft are too wide, once bumped during the flight, the light equipment will lose a wing, and the heavy aircraft will be destroyed.
If humans can use the golden flower snake method, even in a narrow space, this will allow humans to go to more places, no longer subject to the problem of space size.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="81" > the current status of the goldenrod snake</h1>
It is worth mentioning that the "flying" elegant air power master Golden Flower Snake, the global number is not optimistic, as mentioned earlier, there are a total of five species in the genus Golden Flower Snake, of which only three will "fly". In fact, the other two goldenrod snakes are scarce in number, and scientists have not observed enough live judgment, so it is not certain that they also have this ability.
In the past hundred years of research, the number of specimens collected is less than 10, and almost all of the specimens in recent years have come from Yunnan Province.
Because the golden flower snake is particularly dependent on the forest, a large number of trees are cut down, deforestation and deforestation have reduced the habitat, and the golden flower snake that has lost the protection of trees is easily harmed by ground predators, and it is not toxic enough to protect itself, and soon the population decreases sharply.
Fortunately, human beings do not want the martial arts secrets of the golden flower snake to be lost, and after entering the 21st century, many countries have successively introduced laws to protect the golden flower snake.
I only hope to see them swing gracefully across the forest skyline, so that future generations know that there is such a snake, it has no limbs, no unfolded skin membrane, and no wings, no one will associate it with the concept of "flying", but it really does, it uses the air vortex to generate suction and allow itself to "fly" in the rainforest.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="94" > conclusion</h1>
Nature is full of mystery and full of wonder.
An inconspicuous little snake, without wings and no leather wing structure, can use "flying" in a dense rainforest to travel, and what is even more surprising is that they are not just jumping down, the process involves complex aerodynamics, they know how to use the air flow in the process, and they can also control their own balance.
Seeing these human beings suddenly realize, it is no wonder that physics is called natural science, it is not created by human beings, it exists in every corner of nature, and various physical phenomena occur every day, we humans are just fortunate to see these and put them together and summarize them.
As an animal in nature, perhaps the golden flower snake also discovered the principle of this, so it has used this set of secret books for generations, so that the originally inferior self is turned against the wind and writes his own legend in the forest.