8 Animals Do not have Wings but Can "Fly"

What is meant "fly" here is not a real fly but more like floating or glidering in the air with a long time, even like to fly. What are these animals? These are 8 animals that can "fly" without wings:


1. Chrysopelea (Flying Snake)

or more commonly known as the flying snake, is a genus that belongs to the family Colubridae. Flying snakes are mildly venomous, though the venom is only dangerous to their small prey. Their range is in Southeast Asia (the mainland (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos), Greater and Lesser Sundas, Maluku, and the Philippines), southernmost China, India, and Sri Lanka.

Flying snake is a misnomer, since, barring a strong updraft, these animals can’t actually gain altitude. They’re gliders, using the speed of free fall and contortions of their bodies to catch the air and generate lift.

Once thought to be more parachuters than gliders, recent scientific studies have revealed intricate details about how these limbless, tube-shaped creatures turn plummeting into piloting. To prepare for take-off, a flying snake will slither to the end of a branch, and dangle in a J shape. It propels itself from the branch with the lower half of its body, forms quickly into an S, and flattens to about twice its normal width, giving its normally round body a concave C shape, which can trap air. By undulating back and forth, the snake can actually make turns. Flying snakes are technically better gliders than their more popular mammalian equivalents, the flying squirrels.

There are five recognized species of flying snake, found from western India to the Indonesian archipelago. Knowledge of their behavior in the wild is limited, but they are thought to be highly arboreal, rarely descending from the canopy. The smallest species reach about 2 feet (61 centimeters) in length and the largest grow to 4 feet (1.2 meters).

Their diets are variable depending on their range, but they are known to eat rodents, lizards, frogs, birds, and bats. They are mildly venomous snakes, but their tiny, fixed rear fangs make them harmless to humans.

Scientists don’t know how often or exactly why flying snakes fly, but it’s likely they use their aerobatics to escape predators, to move from tree to tree without having to descend to the forest floor, and possibly even to hunt prey.

One species, the twin-barred tree snake, is thought to be rare in its range, but flying snakes are otherwise quite abundant and have no special conservation status. Flying Snake been known to travel up to 330 ft (100 m) in the air.

2. Draco Volans (Flying Dragon)

Draco volans, commonly known as the flying dragon, is a species of lizard endemic to Southeast Asia.

It is a member of the genus of gliding lizards Draco. It can spread out folds of skin attached to its movable ribs to form "wings" that it uses to glide from tree to tree over distances upwards of 8 metres (26 ft); however, like all modern reptiles, it lacks the ability to sustain powered flight, and is capable only of gliding.

Its wings are brightly coloured with orange, red and blue spots and stripes, and they provide camouflage when folded. The flying dragon can reach a total length of up to 23 centimetres (9.1 in). It feeds on arboreal ants and termites.

3. Exocoetidae (Flying Fish)

The Exocoetidae are a family of marine fish in the order Beloniformes of class Actinopterygii. Fish of this family are known as flying fish. About 64 speciesare grouped in seven to nine genera. Flying fish can make powerful, self-propelled leaps out of water into air, where their long, wing-like fins enable gliding flight for considerable distances above the water's surface. This uncommon ability is a natural defense mechanism to evade predators.

The oldest known fossil of a flying or gliding fish, Potanichthys xingyiensis, dates back to the Middle Triassic, 235–242 million years ago. However, this fossil is not related to modern flying fish, which evolved independently about 66 million years ago.

Flying fish live in all of the oceans, particularly in tropical and warm subtropical waters. Their distinguishing feature is their pectoral fins, which are unusually large, and enable the fish to hide and escape from predators by leaping out of the water and flying through air a few feet above the water's surface. Research has suggested that difficult environmental factors in the flying fish's habitat has led to the evolution of modified fins. ^[7]

To glide upward out of the water, a flying fish moves its tail up to 70 times per second. It then spreads its pectoral finsand tilts them slightly upward to provide lift.At the end of a glide, it folds its pectoral fins to re-enter the sea, or drops its tail into the water to push against the water to lift itself for another glide, possibly changing direction. The curved profile of the "wing" is comparable to the aerodynamic shape of a bird wing. The fish is able to increase its time in the air by flying straight into or at an angle to the direction of updrafts created by a combination of air andocean currents.

4. Flying Lemur

The Sunda flying lemur (Galeopterus variegatus), also known as the Malayan flying lemur or Malayan colugo, is a species of colugo (see below for notes on the common name "flying lemur"). Until recently, it was thought to be one of only two species of flying lemur, the other being the Philippine flying lemur which is found only in the Philippines. The Sunda flying lemur is found throughout Southeast Asia in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore.

The Sunda flying lemur is not a lemur and does not fly. Instead, it glides as it leaps among trees. It is strictly arboreal, is active at night, and feeds on soft plant parts such as young leaves, shoots, flowers, and fruits. After a 60-day gestation period, a single offspring is carried on the mother's abdomen held by a large skin membrane.^[4] It is a forest-dependent species.

The head-body length of Sunda flying lemur is about 34 to 38 cm (13 to 15 in). Its tail length is around 24 to 25 cm (9.4 to 9.8 in), and its weight is 0.9 to 1.3 kg (2.0 to 2.9 lb).

The Sunda flying lemur is protected by national legislation. In addition to deforestation and loss of habitat, local subsistence hunting poses a serious threat to this animal. Competition with the plantain squirrel (Callosciurus notatus) represents another challenge for this species. More information is needed on population declines, but at present the rate of the decline is believed to be probably not fast enough to trigger listing in any category other than Least Concern

5. Squirrel Glider

The squirrel glider (Petaurus norfolcensis) is a nocturnal gliding possum Like most of the wrist-winged gliders, the Squirrel Glider is endemic to Australia. It is about twice the size of the related Sugar Glider (P. breviceps). Its body is 18–23 cm long and its tail measures at 22–33 cm long. It weighs about 230g or 0.5 lbs. They have blue-grey or brown-grey fur on their back and a white belly. The end of their tail is black and they have ha black stripe from their eyes to the mid-back. They have a flying membrane that extends from their 5th front toe to the back of their foot on both sides. When they glide their prehensile tail can act as a rudder, allowing them to steer which direction they want to go.They can glide up to 50m from tree to tree. They tend not to glide in captivity.

6. Flying Gecko


Ptychozoon is a genus of arboreal gecko from Southeast Asia, known as Flying Geckos or Parachute Geckos. They are characterized by cryptic coloration and elaborate webs surrounding the neck, limbs, trunk, and tail. These membranes help to conceal the gecko against trees. When the gecko leaps into the air, the flaps are used to generate lift and allow the gecko to control its fall. It can fly up to 200 feet (60 meters). Also it does a swoop at the end of its flight to land softly. A similar adaptation is found in the gecko Cosymbotus. There are six described species in this genus. They are often kept as pets.
7. Japanese Flying Squid
The Japanese flying squid, Japanese common squid or Pacific flying squid, scientific name Todarodes pacificus, is a squid of the familyOmmastrephidae. This animal lives in the northern Pacific Ocean, in the area surrounding Japan, along the entire coast of China up to Russia, then spreading across the Bering Strait east towards the southern coast of Alaska and Canada. They tend to cluster around the central region of Vietnam. Flying squid have been observed to cover distances as long as 30m^[9] above the surface of the water, presumably to avoid predators or save energy as they migrate across vast expanses of ocean,^[10]uniquely utilizing jet-propelled aerial locomotion
8. Flying Frog

The overachieving Wallace's flying frog wasn't content to just hop and swim. Thousands of years of watching birds navigate the rain forest and avoid predators by taking to the sky appears to have convinced this unique amphibian that air travel is the way to go.

Also known as parachute frogs, Wallace's flying frogs inhabit the dense tropical jungles of Malaysia and Borneo. They live almost exclusively in the trees, descending only to mate and lay eggs.

When threatened or in search of prey, they will leap from a branch and splay their four webbed feet. The membranes between their toes and loose skin flaps on their sides catch the air as they fall, helping them to glide, sometimes 50 feet (15 meters) or more, to a neighboring tree branch or even all the way to the ground. They also have oversized toe pads to help them land softly and stick to tree trunks.

Wallace's flying frogs are not the only frogs who have developed this ability, but they are among the largest. The black color of their foot webbing helps distinguish them from their similarly aerial cousins.

They are generally bright green with yellow sides and grow to about 4 inches (10 centimeters). They survive mainly on insects.

The Wallace's flying frog population is considered stable, and they have special status only in certain localities. However, they are partial to breeding and laying eggs in the fetid wallowing holes of the nearly extinct Asian rhinoceros, and further decreases in rhino populations may negatively affect the species.

Source : Wikipedia.org
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/