A newly named snake species honors a rock guitarist
Researchers have confirmed a new-to-science groundsnake from the forests of New Guinea and named it after Guns N' Roses guitarist Slash, a longtime reptile advocate.
Deep in the forests of New Guinea, a secretive, nocturnal groundsnake has been living largely unnoticed by science, until a team of researchers took a closer look at museum specimens and confirmed it was something entirely new.
The reddish-brown snake, measuring about 71 centimeters long, has been named Lielaphis slashi, making it the twentieth confirmed species in its genus. Researchers Tianqi Huang, Christopher Austin, Justin Bernstein, Bulisa Iova, Jackson Roberts, Jeffrey Frederick and Sara Ruane, the Field Museum's associate curator of herpetology and the study's senior author, described the species in the journal Zootaxa.
The team gave it the common name Slash's groundsnake, honoring Guns N' Roses guitarist Saul Hudson, known as Slash, for his lifelong support of reptiles, zoos and natural history museums. Because New Guinea's groundsnakes look so similar to one another and live such hidden lives, genetic testing was needed to confirm this one was truly distinct.
Every newly named species is a small win for how much of the natural world is still waiting to be properly counted and understood, one careful look at a time.
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