When paradise tree snakes, found in South and Southeast Asia, leap from trees, they don’t tumble to the ground in disarray. They gracefully glide long distances through the air.

And a study in which scientists threw the snakes from a 50-foot tower and recorded their descent on video suggests that the snakes are active fliers, manipulating their bodies to aerodynamic effect.

“It essentially looks like they are slithering in the air, like a whip moving left and right,” said Jake Socha, the study’s lead author and a biomechanist at Virginia Tech. “The body itself moves up and down as well.”

Dr. Socha and his colleagues found that the paradise tree snake tilts its body about 25 to 30 degrees relative to the airflow to stay as aerodynamic as possible. The farthest a snake was able to travel from the tower was about 79 feet.