A Snake Appears on Instagram… and Surprises Scientists!

An Indian student shared a photo he took of a snake in his own backyard in Chamba, at the base of the western Himalayas, and little did he know that he revealed a species unknown to scientists.

“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,” says Zeeshan Mirza, a scientist studying reptiles and amphibians at India’s National Centre for Biological Sciences.

Virendar Bhardwaj took a close-up photograph of a tiny black and white snake that was flickering a forked tongue. Known by locals, the kukri – whose name comes from the Nepali dagger that has a curved blade, much like the snake’s teeth – had not yet been described in scientific literature. Until now. Two snakes were captured – one male and one female – to collect morphological data like the number of scales and the shape of the skull. DNA analysis was run to compare the snakes’ genomes with other species, and despite being similar to the common kukri – also known as Oligodon arnensis – the snake on the photo was an entirely undescribed species. According to the World Wildlife Fund, the western Himalayas harbor abundant biodiversity, and the kukri was one of many reptiles still undocumented from the region.