Ornate Flying Snake: Nature’s Gliding Jewel

I was 12 years old when I visited the Madras Snake Park Trust and got my first book on Indian snakes, Common Indian Snakes - A Field Guide. Flipping through the pages, I stopped and looked at a flying snake in wonderment. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. The picture of the flying snake was black-and-white, and the print quality didn’t give me a very good idea of what this snake really looked like. For years it remained a mystery.

Three or four years later, I saw this incredibly beautiful snake first-hand on a trek through Yana, an erstwhile pristine sacred grove in Karnataka’s Western Ghats. We were walking past some areca nut plantations that were being harvested when a man atop a palm tree yelled “haavu” (Kannada for snake) and slid down. The snake in question leapt off the tree and landed on the plantation floor, from where it shot off and began climbing another palm tree with incredible ease and speed. I was delighted to finally see one of these snakes and bewildered by how intricate and stupefyingly beautiful it was. That experience was short, but the memory has remained with me. 

The ornate flying snake (Chrysopelea ornata), like other flying snakes, defies logic by being able to glide through the air. It lowers itself off a branch while holding on with its tail, and then swings and launches itself forward and off the branch. What happens next is the most remarkable thing. It flattens itself down to almost ribbon-thin and glides…forward!

Researchers wanted to put this snake’s gliding ability to the test. So, many years ago, they built a 30-metre-high platform, encouraged numerous flying snakes to leap off these platforms and recorded their flight. I remember the incredible imagery that resulted from these experiments. Snakes flattened out and were recorded writhing through the air. But there was more. For this over-achiever, being a gliding cylinder wasn’t enough. The researchers didn’t just test the distance the snakes could glide but also whether they could manoeuvre themselves mid-flight. Turns out they can. Snakes consistently changed direction mid-air to land on a second platform provided below their launch one above the ground. The snakes were inclined to land on a location above the ground, thereby, staying on the ‘tree’ as opposed to landing on the floor.

What triggered the adaptation of flight in an animal that is otherwise surface bound? The working theory is that the tall trees of the tropical and sub-tropical forests of South and Southeast Asia encouraged the evolution of flight in otherwise flightless animals. There are numerous other examples — gliding geckos, dracos (lizards), flying squirrels, gliding frogs etc. are all found in these forests. However, all the other species use some appendage or the other to enable flight. On the other hand, flying snakes only flatten their otherwise unsuitable bodies to glide by increasing wind resistance. They’ve evolved to be entirely at home high up in these forest canopies.

Their colour and pattern are striking and ornate when they are seen or photographed outside the canopy. But, while on trees with rough bark, the ornate patterning breaks their form and movement to make it difficult for predators to get a visual lock on them. Even the tongue is coloured and patterned just like the body, and it goes largely unnoticed while flicking in and out. They are exceedingly good climbers, able to scale tree trunks that have barely a hint of purchase. For this, they have evolved a sharp ridge on either side of their ventral (belly) scales that help them grip onto the slightest hold, enabling them to climb vertical tree trunks and traverse thin, flimsy branches with unbelievable speed and fluidity.  

All this, along with excellent eyesight, makes ornate flying snakes exceptionally good hunters. Much of their diet — lizards, frogs, small rodents, and birds — consists of fast-moving creatures who would easily escape in an arboreal setting. But for this active and agile snake, frequently feeding to support its relatively high metabolism is not an issue.

Flying snakes are relatively common where they’re found, even sharing space with humans. Despite their proximity to humans and bright colouring, these snakes are not easily seen. I believe this is largely due to them spending much of their time high up in the canopy or hidden out of view. But there are a few places where one can regularly see these snakes. They’re found commonly between tiled roofs of village huts, where they feed on the abundant geckos and small rodents found around humans. They kill with a combination of constriction and venom that is not medically significant to humans but has a subduing effect on their preferred prey.

As far as breeding goes, flying snakes lay up to 12 eggs in trees, bamboo hollows, termite mounds, or rodent burrows. I was once brought four snake eggs from inside an old wall that was being torn down, and these hatched to reveal ornate flying snakes. The young were much darker than the adults but just as stunning. They were tremendously active, visually stimulated, and eager to feed. They seemed to react most to movement and visual stimulus. I raised them for a couple of months on insects and tiny field mice before releasing them back at the house where they were found. They were about 15 cm when they hatched and doubled that length within the two months I had them with me.

The flying snake’s striking looks, and the ease with which it can be kept in captivity, make it quite popular in the international pet trade. Flying snakes are captured and exported rampantly from Southeast Asia to the West. While there has been no assessment of this trade, it is undoubtedly highly unsustainable.

In India, the pet trade is not one of the myriad threats this species faces. However, like numerous other arboreal species, the galloping rate of deforestation looms menacingly over the flying snake’s chances of survival. Combine this with the almost universal fear and intolerance of all snakes, and the species has little hope for the future. But if we can begin tolerating these animals around us without knee-jerk reactions of either killing or moving them, flying snakes and all other snakes will find their space amongst us. If we begin to take joy in simply having these incredible animals around us without interfering with them, we might enable these gliding gems to persist and even thrive and make our world richer.