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How wingless salamanders fly

From frogs remaining airborne using their webbed feet to lizards and snakes gliding by expanding their ribcages, biologists might have thought they had seen every unusual aerial strategy — but now they report flying salamanders.
  1. David Lentink

    1. David Lentink is in the Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Groningen, Groningen 9712 CP, the Netherlands.

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One way to investigate the evolution of flight-associated behaviours is to monitor an animal’s response to weightlessness generated by the parabolic-flight method used for astronaut training. Parabolic-flight data1 indicate that some reptiles and amphibians floating in microgravity adopt skydiving postures, which is unexpected because most of these animals do not have body shapes adapted for aerial behaviour. Many of the animals display aerial righting behaviour (positioning themselves so that their feet can absorb the impact on contact with the ground) and most — including one salamander species — don’t vomit, which suggests that they don’t develop motion sickness. Such characteristics undoubtedly help tree-dwelling salamanders such as the wandering salamander (Aneides vagrans) to move around in the canopy of old-growth redwood trees2.

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Nature 606, 251-252 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01375-x

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Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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