From the mouths of snakes - November 24, 2009
New species are discovered all the time, but it’s not quite so frequent for them to fall out of the mouths of snakes.
Andrew Marshall, of the University of York, was surveying monkeys in the Magombera Forest in Tanzania when he surprised a twig snake having dinner (or perhaps breakfast). The poor snake dropped the chameleon it was attempting to ingest and our story begins.
“It saw me and fled, and as it did so spat out a chameleon,” says Marshall (Daily Telegraph). “I took photos and showed them to a local herpetologist, who instantly recognised that it was a new species.”
That first example didn’t survive its encounter with the snake but another was later found and they have both now been named as Kinyongia magomberae – the Magombera chameleon – and reported in the African Journal of Herpetology (press release).
Unfortunately, as always seems to be the case with new species these days, the habitat of this critter is already under threat.
Marshall told the Guardian, “The thing is, if you work in an area of conservation importance and you can give a species the name of that area it can really highlight that area. By giving it the name Magombera it raises the importance of the forest.”
Personally though, I would have preferred him to name it something more related to its discovery, Kinyongia serpens-cibus perhaps? (Apologies in advance to Latin-scholars for that one.)
Image: Andrew Marshall / African Journal of Herpetology
