Arunachal Pradesh has gifted India with a fifth brown pit viper with a reddish tinge. Herpetologists discovered the new species of pit viper – a venomous snake with a unique heat-sensing system – from a forest in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. India has four other brown pit vipers – Malabar, Horseshoe, Hump-nosed and Himalayan – discovered 70 years ago. The new species, Trimeresurus arunachalensis, makes Arunachal Pradesh the only Indian state to have a pit viper named after it. As only one male has been found so far, this single known specimen of the species currently makes it the rarest pit viper in the world.
Comparative analyses of DNA sequences by Mr. Deepak and examination of morphological features by Mr. Captain suggested that the snake belonged to a species not described before.
Mr. Bhatt, a scientist of the Arunachal Pradesh forest department, said that 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.
Picture Credit : Google