- According to the the Russian Journal of Herpetology, a team of herpetologists led by Ashok Captain have described a new species of reddish-brown pit viper — a venomous snake with a unique heat-sensing system — from a forest in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh.
- With this discovery, India now has a fifth brown pit viper but with a reddish tinge.
- The discovery makes the Arunachal pit viper (Trimeresurus arunachalensis) the second serpent to have been discovered after the non-venomous crying keelback in the State’s Lepa-Rada district in 2018.
- The new species also makes Arunachal Pradesh the only Indian state to have a pit viper named after it.
- As per the researchers, India had four brown pit vipers before the Arunachal Pradesh discovery.
- The other four — Malabar, horseshoe, hump-nosed and Himalayan — were discovered 70 years ago.
- A reasearch team led by Mr. Athreya, from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, had encountered the snake while conducting biodiversity surveys in Arunachal Pradesh’s Eaglenest region. A resident of the area had first shown Mr Pandit the snake in a forest patch near Ramda village.
- The single known specimen of this species makes it currently the rarest pit viper in the world. The specimen was donated to the museum of the State Forest Research Institute in Itanagar. (The Hindu)
