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The new species is Oligodon churahensis, a kukri snake from the Churah Valley near Chamba in India’s Himachal Pradesh. A herpetologist flagged it after spotting a snake in a photograph a student had posted to Instagram during the COVID-19 lockdown. The discovery was reported in December 2021, but three details in the usual headline version of the story, a selfie, a snake in the background and a giant species, are not supported by the reporting.
How a lockdown photo reached a herpetologist
Virender Bhardwaj, a master’s student at Guru Nanak Dev University, was photographing wildlife around his home in Chamba, in India’s Himalayan foothills, during the 2020 lockdown. His Instagram account featured animals and other local nature observations. One of his posts showed a kukri snake.
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Zeeshan A. Mirza, a herpetologist at India’s National Centre for Biological Sciences, saw the image and thought it resembled the common kukri snake, Oligodon arnensis. He noticed differences that did not fit that identification, contacted Bhardwaj, and the two began checking whether the animal was unknown to science.
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1Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minute2Repair Windows errors before they cause bigger problems3Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesReporting says two specimens were collected in 2020. The findings were later published in the journal Evolutionary Systematics, where the proposed name Oligodon churahensis appears with the suggested common name “Churah Valley Kukri.” Mirza’s reaction, as reproduced in Big Think’s December 2021 report, was:
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“It is quite interesting to see how an image on Instagram led to the discovery of such a pretty snake that, until very recently, remained hidden to the world.”
What separates it from the common kukri snake
The reporting describes distinctions from O. arnensis in five evidence categories. The table lists each category and what the accessible coverage says about it. None of the coverage gives the underlying values.
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| Evidence category | What the reporting says | Exact values |
|---|---|---|
| External morphology | Differences from O. arnensis were noticed in the animal’s form and appearance | Not stated in the accessible reporting |
| Skull shape | Cited as a distinguishing feature | Not stated in the accessible reporting |
| Tooth type | Cited as a distinguishing feature | Not stated in the accessible reporting |
| Scale count | Cited as a distinguishing feature | Not stated in the accessible reporting |
| DNA | Divergence from samples of known species | Not stated in the accessible reporting |
Taken together, these are the lines of evidence that support a separate species. A new name is only defensible if several independent traits point the same way, and the reporting points to morphology, skull, teeth, scales and DNA together rather than to a single feature.
What the headline gets wrong
- “Selfie”: The reports describe a snake photograph Bhardwaj posted. They do not describe a picture of him with the animal.
- “In the background”: The reporting does not say where the snake sat in the frame, so this placement cannot be confirmed.
- “Giant”: The reporting calls the animal a kukri snake and a new species. It never describes it as large, so size should not be read into the story.
If the headline’s details came from a different story, that story is not the one described here.
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What is and is not established
- Established by the reporting: the Instagram lead, the herpetologist’s identification of a possible unknown species, two specimens collected in 2020, publication in Evolutionary Systematics, and the proposed name with its common name.
- Not established in this article: measurements, skull and tooth details, scale counts and DNA values.
The original paper and the EurekAlert press release were not accessible when this article was prepared, so the paper’s figures are not reproduced here. Readers who need them should consult the paper in Evolutionary Systematics. The quotation above comes from Big Think’s coverage and has not been checked against the original release.
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