Artistic representation of
the Namibian flying snake based upon eyewitness descriptions (© Philippa
Foster)
I went once to a certain place in Arabia, almost
exactly opposite the city of Buto, to make inquiries concerning the winged
serpents. On my arrival I saw the back-bones and ribs of serpents in such
numbers as it is impossible to describe: of the ribs there were a multitude of
heaps, some great, some small, some middle-sized. The place where the bones lie
is at the entrance of a narrow gorge between steep mountains, where there open
upon a spacious plain communicating with the great plain of Egypt. The story
goes that with the spring the winged snakes come flying from Arabia towards
Egypt, but are met in this gorge by the birds called ibises, who forbid their
entrance and destroy them all. The Arabians assert, and the Egyptians also
admit, that it is on account of the service thus rendered that the Egyptians
hold the ibis in so much reverence.
Herodotus – The
History, Book II
Despite
its common name, the so-called flying snake Chrysopelea ornata of
southeast Asia cannot actively fly. However, it is well known that this
distinctive species can glide for up to 300 ft through the air by launching
itself from a tree while simultaneously spreading its ribs and flattening its
body, until its undersurface is concave, thereby transforming itself into a
ribbon-shaped parachute.
Southeast Asia's known flying
snake Chrysopelea ornata (public
domain)
Yet
according to some remarkable reports filed away within the bulging archives of
cryptozoology, there may be some currently-undescribed species of snake that
are capable of true flight, i.e. achieved with the aid of wings or comparable
means of active propulsion.
THE NAMIBIAN FLYING SNAKE
One such mystery beast is the supposed flying snake that has
been reported not only by the native Namaqua people but also by a number of
European eyewitnesses within the Namib Desert of southern Namibia. According to
their generally consistent accounts, it has a brown or yellow body mottled with
dark spots, an inflated neck, and a very large head bearing a pair of short
backward-pointing horns - plus, very remarkably, a glowing 'torch' in the
centre of its brow. Most astonishing of all, however, is the pair of membranous
bat-like wings allegedly emerging from the sides of its neck or mouth.
Eyewitnesses
have stated that this extraordinary snake launches itself from the summit of a
high rocky ledge, then soars down to the ground, landing with an appreciable impact
and producing scaly tracks in the dusty earth. In 1942, while tending sheep in
the mountains at Keetmanshoop, teenager Michael Esterhuise threw a stone at
what he had assumed to be a large monitor lizard lurking inside a rocky crack.
When it emerged, however, it revealed itself to be a big snake with a pair of
wing-like structures projecting from the sides of its mouth.
A second reconstruction of
the Namibian flying snake's possible appearance (© Tim Morris)
On a
separate occasion, moreover, one of these serpents soared down towards
Esterhuise after having launched itself from a rocky ledge. When it landed,
hitting the ground with great force, Esterhuise fainted, and when he was later
found (unharmed though still unconscious) by a search party, the snake had gone
but its tracks remained. They were subsequently examined by no less celebrated
a naturalist than Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer – curator of South Africa's East
London Museum and immortalised zoologically as the discoverer of that famous
'living fossil' fish the coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae in 1938. In her
opinion, these tracks, containing the clear impression of scales, were indeed
consistent with the marks that a snake would make.
A South
African television documentary by Angus Whitty Productions, entitled In
Search of the Giant Flying Snake of Namibia and first broadcast in 1995, contained
testimony from a number of alleged eyewitnesses, which provided estimates of
this mystery serpent's total length that ranged from 9 ft to 15 ft. The
programme also specially prepared and featured on-screen a detailed drawing of
the latter snake's alleged appearance based upon such testimony.
Screenshot of the flying
snake drawing from In Search of the Giant
Flying Snake of Namibia (© Angus Whitty Productions – reproduced here on a
strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for educational/review purposes only)
Well worth noting is that Namibia is a former German colony, so
it is not impossible that Teutonic legends of lightning snakes retold here by
German settlers may have infiltrated and influenced native Namibian lore.
However, such legends cannot leave physical, tangible tracks like those
examined by Miss Courtenay-Latimer, so perhaps a real snake is indeed present
but one whose appearance has been exaggerated or distorted in the telling due
to shock by those who have unexpectedly encountered it.
If so, the Namibian flying snake may still be an undescribed
species, but one that in reality merely sports a pair of extensible lateral
membranes similar to those of the famous Asian gliding lizard Draco volans
(though whether such structures would be sufficiently adept, aerodynamically,
to bear so sizeable a snake through the air is another matter), plus a pair of
horny projections resembling the 'eyebrow' horns of certain African vipers. As
for its glowing 'torch', this may be nothing more mysterious than a
highly-reflective patch of shining scales on its brow.
THE TL'IISH NAAT'A'I OR ARIZONA FLYING
SNAKE
For a number of years, American cryptozoologist Nick Sucik has
been investigating reports of an equally mystifying but even more obscure
aerial anomaly of the serpentine kind - the tl'iish naat'a'í (pronounced
'kleesh-not-ahee' and translated as 'snake that flies'). Also known as the Arizona
flying snake, apparently this bizarre reptile is a familiar creature there to
the Navajo Nation, and to the Hopi Nation as well (who refer to it by names
translating as 'sun snake'). They all describe it as being fundamentally serpentine
in form, generally around 2 m long, and dull grey in colour (although sometimes
said to have a red belly), but possessing a pair of retractable and virtually
transparent wing-like membranes. These emerge from behind its head, run laterally
along much of its body's length, can flap vigorously and very rapidly, and are thus
used for active flight (rather than passive gliding) purposes.
Some eyewitnesses have stated that these membranes sparkle in
the sun when illuminated at certain angles. They also claim that this
mysterious reptile constructs a kind of nest from twigs, located along the
sides of cliffs or among rocks; and that when airborne, its flying membranes
make a hissing sound, likened by some witnesses to a passenger jet's noise when
passing by overhead. Comparable reports have also emerged from both the Texas
and the Mexican sides of the Rio Grande, including one sighting of an unusual
snake-like entity flying amid a group of bats here that was videoed by a
security camera at Lajitas, Texas, and can be viewed on YouTube. Sadly, the
alleged serpent is only glimpsed briefly and even then not clearly. Some
viewers have opined that it may itself have been a bat (albeit a much larger
one) or even an owl, but Nick is not convinced by such identities.
The video can presently be accessed here
on YouTube, where it was posted by a Gil Bartee on 26 June 2008. Sadly, however,
the alleged serpent is only glimpsed very briefly (I assume that it is the
entity appearing at 0:54 minutes into the video – Bartee provides no details), and
even then not clearly. Some viewers have opined that it may itself have been a
bat (albeit a much larger one) or even an owl, but Nick is not convinced by
such identities.
Artistic representation of the Arizona flying snake (© Tim
Morris)
On 10 November 2016, British cryptozoological researcher Richard
Muirhead posted in Facebook's Cryptozoology Herpetological Research Group a
hitherto-obscure newspaper article dealing principally with the
afore-mentioned, long-known Asian flying snake Chrysopelea ornata, but
whose final paragraph contained information that is definitely of
cryptozoological interest. Published in the Oregonian on 15 March 1942,
the paragraph in question reads as follows:
A western prototype [i.e. of Chrysopelea
ornata] is reputed to exist somewhere in Southern Mexico, although snake
experts have made many fruitless expeditions into the interior for living
specimens.
Might this be a previously-unpublicised reference to the tl'iish
naat'a'í? If so, however, it indicates that this mystery snake, or something
comparable, exists further south in Mexico than the Rio Grande.
In 2004, Nick prepared a detailed paper documenting traditional folklore
and contemporary sightings relating to the tl'iish naat'a'í, which could
formerly be viewed online (at:
http://www.azcentral.com/12news/pics/dragonsofthedine.pdf) but has now disappeared
(happily, I downloaded a copy for my files while it was still online), and
contains a number of fascinating eyewitness accounts of this truly
extraordinary, zoologically-unknown snake.
EUROPEAN WINGED SNAKES
Remarkably, some intriguing but thoroughly mystifying,
modern-day reports of aerial snakes have even been filed from Europe. For
instance, one day during 1930 or 1931, the mother of André Mellira was
preparing lunch in a hut deep within the forest at the mountain village of La
Bollène-Vésubie, close to Nice, southern France, when she looked out of the
window and saw what looked like a green snake with wings! Moreover, this
amazing creature promptly flew down from the branches of a tree close by and
landed upon the hut's window sill. When Mellira's mother cried out in fear and
alarm, however, her unexpected winged visitor dived down into a bush and
vanished. Intriguingly, there is a longstanding tradition of winged snakes
inhabiting the southern Alps, but these have always been discounted by scientists
as myths.
An illustration from a 1723 publication by Swiss scholar Johann Jakob Scheuchzer depicting an alleged alpine winged snake
(public domain)
A 12-year-old Bulgarian girl called Hazel Göksu was walking
towards a spring very near her home one summer evening in 1947 in order to fill
two buckets with water. Suddenly, however, she noticed what initially looked
like some branches lying on the path ahead, but as she drew nearer she realised
that they were thin snakes. Black, grey, and white in colour, and 1-2 m long,
they abruptly emitted a peculiar cry - and then launched themselves into the
air, flying 2-3 m above the ground in a straight line to the spring, about 150
m away, before vanishing behind some trees. Hazel was so frightened by what she
had seen that she ran back to her home immediately, and never visited the
spring again alone.
A COUPLE OF REPTILIAN LONDON PECULIARS?
Perhaps the most unexpected flying snakes ever recorded from
Europe, however, were reported even closer to home – West London. According to
a correspondent writing as 'SB' in The Gentleman's Magazine on 20 April
1798, a truly remarkable animal was observed during early August 1776 just a
few miles west of London:
The strange object was of the
serpent kind: its size that of the largest common snake; and as well as it
could be discovered from so transient a view of it, resembled it by a kind of
grey mottled skin. The head of this extraordinary animal appeared about the
size of a small woman's hand. It had a pair of short wings very forward on the
body, near its head; and the length of the whole body was about two feet. Its
flight was very gentle; it seemed too heavy to fly either fast or high; and its
manner of flying was not in an horizontal attitude, but with its head
considerably higher than the tail; so that it seemed continually labouring to
ascend without ever being able to raise itself much higher than seven or eight
feet from the ground.
Bestiary illustration of a flying snake-like reptile (public
domain)
This same magazine subsequently published a second, more recent
report, by a correspondent signing only as 'JR' - describing a sighting by a friend
of the same (or a very similar) flying snake encountered at 10.30 pm on 15 July
1797 on the road between Hammersmith and Hyde Park Corner:
The body was of a dark colour,
about the thickness of the lower part of a man's arm, about two feet long. The
wings were very short, and placed near the head. The head was raised above the
body. It was not seven or eight feet from the ground. Being an animal of such
uncommon description, I was particular in noticing the day of the month, and
likewise being the day preceding a most dreadful storm of thunder and
lightning.
If we are willing to accept that these reports are not outright
hoaxes (worth noting, however, is that neither of the authors supplied their
name), or bizarre exaggerations of some large insect like a damselfly or robber
fly (both of which when in flight sometimes hold their body in a similar pose
to that described for this winged serpent), or some abstruse example of 18th-Century
political satire, we can only assume that the observers were not zoologically-informed,
and had mistaken some other, less bizarre creature for a flying snake.
Indeed, this particular case reminds me of those
occasions on which I have been asked to remove 'baby horned snakes' from
neighbours' gardens during the summer, only to discover time and time again
that they are actually the large, distinctive caterpillars of the great
elephant hawk moth Deilephila elpenor. Having said that, however, and
having read many times the authors' respective descriptions quoted above of
what they allegedly saw, I still do not have even the slightest notion of what
this enigmatic creature may have been!
EGYPT'S PLAGUE OF FLYING SERPENTS
Finally:
no discussion of aerial snakes could be complete without considering the very
curious case of Egypt's supposed plague of flying serpents.
In
early times, small but highly venomous snakes of many different colours but all
possessing membranous bat-like wings reputedly existed in Arabia, and
congregated in great throngs upon the trees that produced the much-sought-after
frankincense resin.
Bestiary engraving of two
Arabian flying snakes and an ibis (public domain)
According
to the celebrated Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus (c.484–425 BC):
[The Arabians] gather
frankincense by burning that storax [styrax resin] which Phoenicians carry to
Hellas; they burn this and so get the frankincense; for the spice-bearing trees
are guarded by small winged snakes of varied colour, many around each tree;
these are the snakes that attack Egypt. Nothing except the smoke of storax will
drive them away from the trees.
So
numerous were they, in fact, that during their springtime migration from Arabia
towards Egypt, the very air resounded with their incessant hissing and the
unceasing beating of innumerable wings. Happily, however, Egypt's sacred ibises
soon decimated these toxic ophidian locusts, devouring them in such vast quantities
that none remained.
Many
scholars believe that these winged wonders really were locusts, whose 'transformation'
into snakes was due merely to exaggerated, elaborated retellings by successive storytellers
down through the ages. Others claim that they really were snakes, but that
their wings were either hearsay or fictitious additions purposefully supplied
later by chroniclers anxious to enhance their tomes' dramatic content.
A swarm of locusts vividly depicted in a chromolithograph from 1890 (public domain)
Whatever
the explanation, it can be said with certainty that in spite of Herodotus's
first-hand observation of what he claimed to be masses of piled-up skeletons of
these creatures (see this present ShukerNature article's opening quotation), no
such snakes exist in the Middle East today. Presumably, therefore, the
skeletons seen by him were not from snakes at all (with no detailed description
or illustrations of them to examine, it is impossible to know for sure) – or perhaps
their macabre mode of reproduction explains their demise.
For according
yet again to the writings of Herodotus (and those of several other ancient
historians too), at the very height of passion the female Arabian winged snake
would bite her unfortunate partner's head off, rather like a serpentine praying
mantis. And when the young snakes developing inside her afterwards had attained
the required size for emerging into outside world, they would gnaw their way
out of their mother's body, chewing through her uterus and gut, thereby killing
her in the process.
Consequently,
even if such fanciful creatures really did exist at one time, cursed with such
a deadly mode of reproduction and birth it is perhaps little wonder that
Arabia's flying serpents became extinct! In reality, however, it seems far more plausible that such claims were based upon misinterpretations of skin sloughing in snakes, with observers of such activity wrongly assuming that a matured snake offspring was bursting out through the skin of a dead parent. Or, to put it another way: in addition to being a highly influential scholar, Herodotus was nothing if not an imaginative one!
Finally:
just in case you may be wondering – I certainly haven't forgotten the
extraordinary winged feathered snakes reported from various localities in
Wales, as documented by me in my book From
Flying Toads To Snakes With Wings and also appearing on its front cover.
The reason why they're not included above in this present ShukerNature article
is that they've already been featured extensively in a previous one, devoted
entirely to them – so please click here
to access it.
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