Scientists describe a new Himalayan snake species found via Instagram1

Virendar Bhardwaj uploaded this photo of a snake in his backyard in Himachal Pradesh. It was later found to be an undescribed species. Photo by Virender Bhardwaj.

Researchers have found a snake species new to science in the Himalayas — on Instagram!

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, Virender Bhardwaj, a master’s student at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, explored the backyard of his house in Chamba at the foot of the Himalayas. He began photographing the snakes, lizards, frogs, and insects around the home and uploading those photos to the social media platform, Instagram.

In one of these posts, uploaded on June 5, 2020, Zeeshan A. Mirza, a herpetologist from the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bengaluru noticed an unfamiliar snake. The snake belonged to a group commonly called kukri snakes, named after their teeth which are curved like a kukri, or Nepali dagger. But this specimen didn’t match the common kukri snake of the region.

Bhardwaj was able to locate two of the snakes, enough for the team, which included Mirza and Harshil Patel of Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat, western India, to begin the identification process.

The work was put on hold due to COVID-19 restrictions, which made visiting labs and natural history museums difficult. But once the labs opened back up in early 2021, molecular data for the species confirmed it was indeed different from the common kukri snake. Morphological data from the literature, as well as computerised tomography (CT) scans of the species’ skeletal structure further revealed that the species was undescribed.

The new-to-science species was named Oligodon churahensis, after the Churah Valley in Himachal Pradesh, where the species was discovered. A description of the species is published in the journal Evolutionary Systematics.

The western Himalayas are comparatively less explored than many other regions, and dedicated work in this region is necessary to reveal the biodiversity of the region, Mirza says. The region harbors unique species of reptiles that scientists have only begun to unravel in the last couple of years.

“It is quite interesting to note that how an image from Instagram led to the discovery of such a pretty snake that was unknown to the world, ” Mirza told Mongabay. “Exploration of your own backyard may yield species that are perhaps undocumented. Lately, people want to travel to remote biodiversity hotspots to find new or rare species, but if one looks at their own backyard, one may end up finding a new species right there.”