3-foot-long creature with black tongue found on island. It’s a new species
On an island in Papua New Guinea, a 3-foot-long creature with a black tongue made itself at home in a village garden — or it tried to, at least. Locals spotted the “smooth” animal and caught it.
They didn’t know it at the time, but they’d just discovered a new species.
Biologist Fred Kraus visited Woodlark Island as part of an ongoing project to document the region’s reptile diversity. He was particularly interested in a group of tree-dwelling snakes with a “poorly understood” classification system, he wrote in a study published April 4 in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa.
During his visit, villagers gave Kraus several snakes they’d found near their homes, the study said. Intrigued, Kraus took a close look at the reptiles and compared them to other known species. They turned out to be a new species: Dendrelaphis roseni, or Rosen’s tree snake.
Rosen’s tree snakes are considered “moderately sized,” reaching about 3 feet, 5 inches in length, the study said. They have “smooth” scales, black tongues and mostly black eyes.
A photo shows the “jet black” coloring of the new species.
Unlike other related species, Rosen’s tree snakes darken in color as the animals age, Kraus said in the study. Smaller, younger snakes generally had a paler hue than older, larger snakes but the process “seems to vary individually.”
Much about the lifestyle of the new species remains unknown, but the snakes “appear to thrive in either rainforest or villages and gardens established by humans,” the study said.
Per the study, Kraus said he named the new species after “my late friend, snake ecologist and conservationist Philip Clark Rosen.” Rosen, a New York native, died in 2020 from cancer, according to the Tucson Herpetological Society.
Rosen’s tree snakes have only been found on Woodlark Island, also known as Muyua Island, just off the southeastern tip of mainland Papua New Guinea. A video shared on YouTube in 2024 by VideoElite Multimedia Production shows the island.
The new species was identified by its coloring, genitalia, scale pattern and other subtle physical features, Kraus said. The study did not include a DNA analysis of the new species.
Kraus also discovered three more species of snakes, one each on Misima Island, Rossel Island and Sudest Island.
This story was originally published April 11, 2025 at 1:30 PM.
