Ew species of snake ith ‘bindi’ on body iscovered in Assam
A team of scientists India, the United Kingdom, the United States have disred a new species of snake ssam – the first such find the state in over a century – is characterised by a red k on its body that resembles ndi”. ews of the discovery by a , which consisted of scienfrom Wildlife Institute of a (WII), Dehradun, Natural ory Museum, London and ersity of Texas, Austin, has published in the animal nomist journal Zootaxa, h is published from New and. he new species has been ed ‘Rhabdophis bindi’ as it “a distinct roughly rhomal red-coloured nuchal spot/ h which is absent from all r species” of the genus bdophis, which has 27 speound across south, east and h-east Asia, scientists said. he species is named due to nique red marking on the of the neck reminiscent of red beauty spot’ adorning heads of Indian women d ‘bindi’,” said Abhijit Das of a herpetologist and faculty ber of the endangered spemanagement department, is associated with the disry. of below 100m from sea level, were collected and studied.
“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 Northeast. However, the new species appears to reside in lowland evergreen forest. Himalayan rednecked 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.