A species of snakes previously unseen in Taiwan was recently documented on Matsu’s Dongyin Island (東引島), naturalists said.
The discovery was documented in a paper entitled Oligodon Chinensis: A Newly Documented Species in Matsu in last month’s issue of the journal China Nature, a Taiwan-based Society of Wildlife and Nature publication.
Author Yu Chung-wei (游崇瑋), a graduate of National Taiwan Normal University’s Department of Life Science, said that the small snake was first seen by several soldiers vacationing near the Dongyin military garrison on June 20.
Photo courtesy of Yu Chung-wei
One of the soldiers decided to take a photograph of the snake and sent the image to Lee Kuan-hsun (李冠勳), a Dayeh University bio-resource department graduate, and asked him to identify the species.
Lee sent the photograph to Huang Fu-sheng (黃福盛), a fellow bio-resource graduate from the same institution, who identified the snake as an ornate kukri snake (Oligodon ornatus), Yu said.
However, Huang decided to forward the photograph to another expert for a second opinion, Yu said.
After receiving the image, Yu determined that the initial identification was wrong and suspected that the snake was a juvenile Chinese kukri snake, which had never been seen in Taiwan before.
With the help of Chen Teng-chuang (陳登創), a Dongyin Island resident, the men were able to find and document two Chinese kukri snakes.
The mature specimen was 45cm long and the juvenile was 15cm long, Yu said.
Chinese kukri snakes and ornate kukri snakes have different striations in the head and neck area, with the ornate kukri snake having V-shaped and heart-shaped striations immediately following the lines around the eyes, while the Chinese kukri snake has arrowhead striations on the same areas, Yu said.
Chinese kukri snakes are common in central and southern China and in Vietnam’s low and medium-altitude regions. They are of the Oligodon genus, like the ornate kukri snake and Formosan kukri snake (Oligodon formosanus) found in Taiwan, he said.
Scientific surveys are rarely conducted on Dongyin Island because of sensitive military facilities and restrictions on field research, making it harder for people to see the nocturnal, terrestrial Chinese kukri snake, Yu said.
Yu said the discovery would not have been possible without the curiosity of the troops stationed on Dongyin Island.
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