An Instagram photo, three years of research: How ‘DiCaprio’s Himalayan snake’ was identified

In June 2020, during the pandemic, Virender Bhardwaj, currently a doctoral student at Mizoram University, was exploring his backyard at his home in Himachal Pradesh in the western Himalayas, when he encountered an intriguing snake. He uploaded its photos on the social media app Instagram, and the images popped up on the feed of his colleague, Zeeshan Mirza. This led to three years of detailed investigations to identify the snake. The team recently published a paper revealing the discovery of an entirely new snake genus and species.

The snake resembled Liopeltis rappii, a species known to be distributed in the eastern Himalayas. However, the researchers noted that the population from Himachal Pradesh differed from the true Liopeltis rappii found in Sikkim with differences observed in the scales on the head and general colouration. The team confirmed this after examining specimens from natural history museums across Europe, the United States and India.

After comparing the DNA sequences generated from this snake with those of known species from across Asia, the researchers concluded that the snake from Himachal Pradesh is related to Liopeltis rappii but differs in several aspects to be called a new species. Both species belong to a new genus, Anguiculus, endemic to the Himalayas. Anguiculus refers to a “small snake” in Latin.

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