A team of scientists from India, the United Kingdom, and the United States have discovered a new species of snake in Assam – the first such find from the state in over a century – that is characterised by a red mark on its body that resembles a “bindi”.
News of the discovery by a team, which consisted of scientists from Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, Natural History Museum, London and University of Texas, Austin, has been published in the animal taxonomist journal Zootaxa, which is published from New Zealand.
The new species has been named ‘Rhabdophis bindi’ as it has “a distinct roughly rhomboidal red-coloured nuchal spot/blotch which is absent from all other species” of the genus Rhabdophis, which has 27 species found across south, east and south-east Asia, scientists said.
“The species is named due to its unique red marking on the back of the neck reminiscent of the ‘red beauty spot’ adorning foreheads of Indian women called ‘bindi’,” said Abhijit Das of WII, a herpetologist and faculty member of the endangered species management department, who is associated with the discovery.
It was Das who first found a specimen of the species during a 2007 snake survey in and around Barail Hill Range in Cachar district of Assam. In subsequent years, 10 other individuals of the species, found at low elevations of below 100m from sea level, were collected and studied.
{{/usCountry}}It was Das who first found a specimen of the species during a 2007 snake survey in and around Barail Hill Range in Cachar district of Assam. In subsequent years, 10 other individuals of the species, found at low elevations of below 100m from sea level, were collected and studied.
{{/usCountry}}“It took 14 years from the time it was first seen till it was classified as a new species because we had to compare the new one with all other closely related species found in different countries and had to study many specimens from across the world. It also took time to do genetic analysis of the species,” said Das.
Morphologically, the new species is generally around 60cm to 80cm in length, resembles the Himalayan red-necked keelback distributed widely in the North-east. However, the new species appears to reside in lowland evergreen forest. Himalayan red-necked keelback, on the other hand, has been found only in elevations above 600m.
“Although majority of zoological discoveries are from northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram, the discovery of ‘Rhabdophis bindi’ from Assam shows that more such undiscovered species may exist even in the well-explored parts of the region,” said Das.
The previous snake species discovered in Assam was a red striped one called ‘Oligodon erythrorhachis’ found in Jeypore area of Upper Assam in 1910 by British herpetologist Frank Wall, according to Das.