New deadly snake from Asia named after character from Chinese myth 'Legend of White Snake'

The very krait that caused his death is now confirmed to belong to the same species identified as a new to science venomous snake, following an examination of samples collected between 2016 and 2019 from Yingjiang County, Yunnan Province, China. The new krait species, found in Southwestern China and Northern Myanmar, is described by Dr. Zening Chen of Guangxi Normal University, Ph. D. candidate Shengchao Shi, Dr. Li Ding from the Chengdu Institute of Biology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dr. Gernot Vogel of the Society for Southeast Asian Herpetology in Germany and Dr. Jingsong Shi of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at Chinese Academy of Sciences. The researchers decided to name the new species Bungarus suzhenae-Suzhen's krait, after the mythical figure of Bai Su Zhen-a powerful snake goddess from the traditional Chinese myth 'Legend of White Snake'. "The black-and-white banded krait is one of the snakes most similar to the white snake in nature, so we decided to name it after Bai Su Zhen," say the authors. The discovery of Suzhen's krait was inspired by another accident from 2015, when the Chinese herpetologist Mian Hou was bitten by a black-and-white banded krait in Yingjiang. The new study makes it easier to distinguish between krait species from China and adjacent southeastern Asia. Citation: New deadly snake from Asia named after character from Chinese myth 'Legend of White Snake' retrieved 6 April 2021 from https://phys. org/news/2021-04-deadly-snake-asia-character-chinese.