In2-MeC
newly discovered entries of In2-DeepFreeze First Generation Animations
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
5 December 2004
In Srila Prabhupada Uvaca Srutakirti Prabhu writes:
"Sometimes, the snake's mission is to kill a certain person," he [Srila Prabhupada] told us. "They will not stop until they succeed. Particularly at the end of the snake's life, sometimes, the snake grows wings. He has a particular person he is to kill. The snake will kill that person and then it goes off to die. "One evening Srila Prabhupda pointed out a particular sound in the stillness of the night.
"Hear that sound?" he asked. "That is the snakebird. It has a special sound. "
Once the mother of a devotee, worried that her son was obliged by his membership in ISKCON to believe in weird notions like flying snakes, wrote to a herpetologist. He answered that there most definitely is no such thing as a flying snake. She sent her son a copy of the letter.
Well, it turns out there is a species of snake called Chrysopelea that does have the ability to glide through the air. Now, this is not the snake Srila Prabhupada spoke of, for it doesn't really have wings. But it does fly, after a fashion, and it does live in India. There are numerous websites that offer information about this snake, complete with videoclips of it flying. Here's a summary from one such site:
Flying snakes are a small group of species of tree snakes that live in South and Southeast Asia. At rest they appear unremarkable, but on the move they're able to take to the air by jumping from the tree, flattening the entire body, and gliding or parachuting to the ground or another tree.
In the field of cryptozoology (the study of animals not yet scientifically classified), other kinds of flying snakes are under investigation. For example, there are accounts of a winged snake native to Wales. The Navajo Indian people of the American Southwest are very sure that a type of winged snake inhabits their land.