7-foot-long creature — found along park road — is new species in Vietnam. Take a look
As a massive animal, it’s hard to think of a place to hide that would keep your existence a secret.
But for one 7.8-foot-long snake in Vietnam, the best place to hide was in plain sight.
A group of researchers were in Bach Ma National Park, on Bach Ma Mountain, when they saw the slithering giant along a main road near a field station, according to an Aug. 19 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Zoological Research: Diversity and Conservation.
Soon, another was spotted outside a nearby restaurant and another along a mountain path on top of the leaf litter, according to the study.
Researchers captured the snakes with their hands, according to the study, and then brought them to the Institute of Tropical Biology Collection of Zoology in Ho Chi Minh City and the Zoological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg.
Upon closer inspection, researchers noticed a few key differences in the snake’s morphology and identified it as a new species.
Ptyas bachmaensis, or the Bach Ma green rat snake, is first distinguished by its large size, researchers said.
The “large-sized snake” has scales in rows of even numbers, according to the study, starting as a rich green color and fading into black.
Its head is brown and adorned by jet-black eyes, researchers said. The snake’s mouth is filled with 28 teeth, increasing in size toward the back of the mouth.
Males of the species are considerably bigger than the females, just shy of 8 feet long compared to 5.5 feet long, respectively, according to the study.
The green rat snake is also different from other known species because of the shape of the male reproductive organ, a hemipenis.
The organ is covered in spines and unforked, researchers said.
The new species was found in a habitat of “montane evergreen forest,” researchers said, and was collected during a light rain.
Rat snakes are non-venomous and instead kill their prey by constricting them, according to Britannica. As their name suggests, they hunt rodents as well as eggs and poultry. They are relatively slow because of their large size but can act in self defense.
Rat snakes are found across North America, Europe and Asia east of the Philippines, according to Britannica, and they are typically found in woodlands and around farm buildings where there might be prey.
Bach Ma National Park is in east-central Vietnam near the coast of the South China Sea.
The research team includes Sang Nguyen, Ba Dinh Vo, Nikolai L. Orlov, Khanh Duy Phan, Manh Van Le, Luan Thanh Nguyen, An Thien Tran, Robert W. Murphy and Jing Che.
