New Himalayan snake species named after 'Titanic' actor Leonardo DiCaprio

Mumbai, Oct 22: 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 here 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.