Mumbai:

A new genus and snake species discovered in the Himalayas has been named after the Academy Award-winning Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio – the “Titanic” star who is also a passionate environmentalist, officials said on Tuesday.

The newly described snake species, ‘Anguiculus dicaprioi’ is distributed from central Nepal to Chamba district in Himachal Pradesh, whereas ‘Anguiculus rappii’ is distributed in Sikkim, Bhutan and Arunachal Pradesh.

These snakes are mostly active from late May to August and are not found at other times of the year, nothing is known about the biology of the two species, and ‘Anguiculus rappii’ is rare and has not been recorded in the last couple of decades.

The snake was first found by Virender Bhardwaj in the backyard of his home in the western Himalayas during the Covid-19 Pandemic lockdown.

He posted its pictures on social media, leading to a sensation – and a three-year-long investigation coupled with laborious research – to identify the snake which resembled ‘Liopeltis rappi’, a species known to be distributed in the eastern Himalayas.

However, the population from Himachal Pradesh differed from the true ‘Liopeltis rappi’ found in Sikkim in many aspects like the scales on the head and general colour patterns — which was confirmed by examining specimens from natural history museums across Europe, the US and even India.

Besides, the DNA sequences generated for this snake did not match any genus and the team included DNA and morphological data for other related species from all over Asia.

The complication of the molecular and morphological data suggested that the snake from HP is related to ‘Liopeltis rappi’ but differed in many aspects, to be called a new species, and both these belong to a new genus that is endemic to the Himalayas region.

A research paper was authored by Zeeshan A. Mirza of Max Planck Institute for Biology at Tubingen (Germany); Virender K. Bhardwaj and H. T. Lalremsanga of Mizoram University (India); Saunak Pal of the Newcastle University (UK); Gernot Vogel of the Society for Southeast Asian Herpetology(Germany); Patrick D. Cambell of the Natural History Museum (UK) and Harshil Patel of the Thackeray Wildlife Foundation (Mumbai, India).

The research paper was submitted early this year and published recently by Scientific Reports, an international peer-reviewed journal.

DiCaprio has been actively involved in creating awareness about global climate change, increased biodiversity losses and the impact of pollution on human health plus related issues.

“The specific epithet ‘dicaprioi’ is a patronym honouring Leonardo DiCaprio, an American actor, film producer, and environmentalist who has been actively involved in creating awareness about global climate change, increased biodiversity loss, and human health issues through pollution,” the report explained.

“The work not only resolved the status of the Himalayan species but also resolved a taxonomic confusion regarding the genera Liopeltis and Gongylosoma that lasted 180 years. The work provides a newly revised classification of these two genera that are distributed across Asia,” said a statement here.

The members of the genus Anguiculus are small and are currently known by two species and these snakes are found at elevations above 1500 meters across the Himalayas.

The authors said that the description of a new snake genus and species from Himachal Pradesh highlights the poor herpetofauna documentation of the western Himalayas.

Preliminary field surveys across Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand suggest that the region’s biodiversity has been grossly underestimated, and along with Jammu & Kashmir, remain the least explored for the herpetofauna biota they host.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Vadodara:

Believe it or not, a man in Gujarat has saved a snake by performing the life-saving technique known as Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR). 

Yash Tadvi, a wildlife rescuer in Gujarat’s Vadodara, said he received a call on his helpline number about a snake being found dead in an area. Upon reaching the location, he said he saw the condition of the reptile, a one-foot non-venomous checkered keelback, and believed that it would survive.

“When I went there, the snake was in an unconscious state. There was no movement, but I was confident that the snake would survive,” Mr Tadvi said after the miraculous save, which was recorded on a phone. 

“So I took its neck in my hand, opened its mouth and tried to bring it back to consciousness by blowing into its mouth for three minutes. Even after giving CPR in the first two attempts, there was no change in its condition. However, when I gave CPR for the third time, it started moving,” he said.

The snake has now been handed over to the forest department.

With inputs from Mahendra Prasad

It wasn’t a scene we get to see very often. The Internet has no dearth of videos showing two or more animals fighting it out for supremacy, but a not-so-usual face-off of a snake and a scorpion is currently going viral on social media.

Shared on Instagram, the short clip features a cobra lounging in what appears to be a small concrete structure. A scorpion is also seen making its way into the snake’s territory. The cobra upon noticing the intruder goes on alert mode. The tension builds as the scorpion inches closer to the snake, with its hood raised — a clear sign of discomfort and readiness to defend itself.

Just as the two creatures come close to each other, the video abruptly cuts off, leaving viewers hanging and speculating about the outcome of this intense standoff. The details about the video’s location or the time are not known.

Watch the clip here:

Needless to say, the clip generated significant buzz on the platform. Many viewers wondered who emerged victorious in this unusual showdown. Some also left hilarious comments on the post.

“Tell your brother sorry and just leave,” wrote a person and added a laughter emoji.

Two other comments referred to the cobra and scorpion as “two friendly characters” and “2 legends in one frame.”

Another said, “Guess that cobra is afraid of bugs too,” implying a funny twist to the predator-prey dynamic.

One user added a satirical twist, saying, “Both cobra and the scorpion were afraid and trying to hide themselves because of you human social animals,” implying how the presence of humans causes fear in these creatures, prompting them to act defensively or seek shelter.

As the video went viral, viewers couldn’t stop thinking about how the unexpected clash ultimately played out.
 

Snakes have been around for a long time: body fossils found in the UK, Portugal and the US stretch all the way back to the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago. Representative Image.
| Photo Credit: K.R. Deepak/The Hindu

Snakes are familiar, distinctive – and often feared – reptiles. And they’ve been around for a long time: body fossils found in the UK, Portugal and the US stretch all the way back to the late Jurassic period, about 150 million years ago.

Until now, though, there hasn’t been a single description of a surface fossilised snake trace – a mark on a surface that’s become cemented and re-exposed over time – anywhere in the world.

There are probably several reasons for this. One is that the tracks of large quadrupeds (four-legged animals), including dinosaurs, are easier to recognise than those of snakes. Another reason could be that snakes tend to avoid sandy or muddy areas in which their trails could be registered, preferring vegetated terrain. Maybe, as the weight of the snake is distributed over its entire length, the trails are shallow and are not easy to identify.

Or perhaps researchers are not adequately familiar with the types of traces that snakes can create.

Also Read | Only 25% of all snakes are poisonous, and it’s important to protect them, say snake lovers

We are part of an ichnological team – experts in identifying fossil tracks and traces. In a recently published article in the journal Ichnos, we described the first snake trace in the fossil record, which we found on South Africa’s Cape south coast. It dates to the Pleistocene epoch, and our studies have shown that it was probably made between 93,000 and 83,000 years ago, almost certainly by a puff adder (Bitis arietans).

As this is a world first, our research team was obliged to create a new ichnogenus and ichnospecies, Anguinichnus linearis, to describe the distinctive pattern in the sand registered by the puff adder.

A snake and a buffalo

The puff adder is a not uncommon sight on the Cape south coast today and, with good reason, strikes fear into residents and visitors: its cytotoxic (tissue-destroying) venom can cause the loss of a limb or worse. It habitually suns itself on trails, staying motionless, and then strikes without warning.

We found the trace fossil in the Walker Bay Nature Reserve (adjacent to Grootbos Private Nature Reserve), just over 100 kilometres south-east of Cape Town.

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Intriguingly, a long-horned buffalo – an extinct species – had walked across the same dune surface soon after the snake left its trace. We know this because one of the buffalo’s tracks is superimposed on the puff adder trace, slightly deforming it.

The puff adder and long-horned buffalo traces were found on the surface of a loose slab, 3 metres long and 2.6 metres wide, which had become dislodged and fallen down onto the beach from overlying cliffs. The slab is submerged twice a day by high tides. We were fortunate to discover it when its surface was bare, as repeat visits have shown that it is often covered in algae or by a thick layer of beach sand.

Snakes in motion

Snakes use four main types of locomotion. Each results in distinctive, recognisable traces.

Puff adders are heavy, thick-set snakes with an average adult length of less than a metre. They mostly employ rectilinear motion, leaving a linear, sometimes slightly undulating trace, often with a central drag mark registered by the tail tip. In this form of motion the snake uses its weight and its belly muscles and grips rough areas on the surface with the posterior edges of its scales. It is drawn forwards through the muscular contractions, creating a linear trace.

Also Read | New species of venomous snake registered from Northeast

We also found possible trace evidence at other sites on the Cape south coast of sidewinding and undulatory motion, but this was inconclusive. We will be looking for further, more conclusive evidence.

Filling important gaps

The newly described puff adder traces help fill a gap in the Pleistocene trace fossil record from the region. More than 350 vertebrate tracksites have been identified, of mammals, birds and reptiles. Most of these sites were registered on dune surfaces, which have now become cemented into aeolianites and re-exposed. Our latest find is yet another global first for the Cape south coast.

With other vertebrate groups, such as dinosaurs and crocodiles, the trace fossil record has substantially augmented the body fossil record, providing new insights. Hopefully this discovery will act as a spur to identify other snake traces from around the world from older deposits, and thus increase our understanding of the evolution of snakes and help to fill a substantial gap in the global trace fossil record.

This undated photo supplied by Canberra Health Services, shows a parasite in a specimen jar at a Canberra hospital in Australia.
| Photo Credit: AP

A neurosurgeon investigating a woman’s mystery symptoms in an Australian hospital says she plucked a wriggling worm from the patient’s brain.

Surgeon Hari Priya Bandi was performing a biopsy through a hole in the 64-year-old patient’s skull at Canberra Hospital last year when she used forceps to pull out the parasite, which measured 8 centimetres, or 3 inches.

“I just thought: ‘What is that? It doesn’t make any sense. But it’s alive and moving,’” Dr. Bandi was quoted on August 29 in The Canberra Times newspaper.

“It continued to move with vigour. We all felt a bit sick,” Dr. Bandi added of her operating team.

The creature was the larva of an Australian native roundworm not previously known to be a human parasite, named Ophidascaris robertsi. The worms are commonly found in carpet pythons.

Dr. Bandi and Canberra infectious diseases physician Sanjaya Senanayake are authors of an article about the extraordinary medical case published in the latest edition of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Dr. Senanayake said he was on duty at the hospital in June last year when the worm was found.

“I got a call saying: ‘We’ve got a patient with an infection problem. We’ve just removed a live worm from this patient’s brain,’” Dr. Senanayake told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

The woman had been admitted to the hospital after experiencing forgetfulness and worsening depression over three months. Scans showed changes in her brain.

A year earlier, she had been admitted to her local hospital in southeast New South Wales state with symptoms including abdominal pain, diarrhea, a dry cough and night sweats.

Dr. Senanayake said the brain biopsy was expected to reveal a cancer or an abscess.

“This patient had been treated… for what was a mystery illness that we thought ultimately was an immunological condition because we hadn’t been able to find a parasite before and then out of nowhere, this big lump appeared in the frontal part of her brain,” Dr. Senanayake said.

“Suddenly, with her [Bandi’s] forceps, she’s picking up this thing that’s wriggling. She and everyone in that operating theatre were absolutely stunned,” Dr. Senanayake added.

Six months after the worm was removed, the patient’s neuropsychiatric symptoms had improved but persisted, the journal article said.

She had returned home but remains under medical observation. Details of her current condition have not been made public.

The worms’ eggs are commonly shed in snake droppings which contaminate grass eaten by small mammals. The life cycle continues as other snakes eat the mammals.

The woman lives near a carpet python habitat and forages for native vegetation called warrigal greens to cook.
While she had no direct contact with snakes, scientists hypothesise that she consumed the eggs from the vegetation or her contaminated hands.