Socha, a Virginia Tech biologist, and his team launched the flying snakes from an over 49 foot tower and recorded the snakes' every move to the finest detail.

They launched the snakes from the top of a 15-metre tower and used four video cameras to construct 3-D images of the animals’ trajectories.

To find out if this might be deliberate, Dr Socha limited their view from the tower so that they could see only straight ahead when they launched themselves.