Science & Nature
Field Museum Kicks Off Year of the Snake With a Big Reveal: a New King Cobra Species
Chun Kamei, herpetology collections manager at the Field, introduced a gathering of reporters to a specimen of the newly named Luzon king cobra. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
King cobra family reunions are about to get complicated.
This past fall, after nearly three decades of study, researchers published confirmation that what was once believed to be a single species of king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) is actually four.
Herpetologists at the Field Museum were thrilled to learn that their collection of 37 king cobra specimens includes at least three of the four species.
And one of the museum’s specimens is particularly special.
On Wednesday, fittingly the kickoff to the Year of the Snake, Chun Kamei, herpetology collections manager at the Field, introduced a gathering of reporters to a specimen of the newly named Luzon king cobra (Ophiophagus salvatana), found only in an isolated part of the Philippines.
“The discovery of new species in museum collections is not uncommon, but for a new species of such large and charismatic animals, it is pretty rare,” Kamei said. “This goes to show how incredibly valuable our museum, our collection is.”
The Field specimen, an 11-foot-long male, has been preserved in a nondescript metal container, covered in cheesecloth and floating in a bath of ethanol, for almost 80 years, she said, having been collected in the Philippines during an expedition led by the museum in the post-war years of 1946-47.
In the just-published study, contemporary researchers used this particular king cobra to help describe the unique characteristics of the Luzon species (meaning the Field’s specimen is what’s known as a “paratype”). Of the more than 150 museum specimens the scientists studied to ID the four species, only six were recategorized as Luzon king cobras.
At up to 18 feet long, king cobras — the largest venomous snake in the world — are hard to miss. So how did three species fly under the scientific radar for close to 200 years?
In retrospect, the physical traits that will now be used to distinguish the species, which include differences in scale patterns (specifically the width of colored bands) and distinctive configurations of teeth, may seem obvious, said Stephen Mahony, research associate at the Field Museum, but that’s not how taxonomy works.
“Is that enough to name a new species?” he asked, or are those variations simply due to geography, which is something that’s commonly seen in wide-ranging species.
“We didn’t identify them as new species because they looked like something that was already known,” Mahony said. “With the advancement of DNA technology in the ‘90s and early 2000s, now we have a lot more access to actually see the genetic differences between these populations. So now we can discover all of these hidden species.”
Video: Field Museum herpetologists uncoil a specimen of the renamed Luzon king cobra, which played a key role in identifying new species of the snake. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
The expansion of the king cobra family isn’t just of interest to herpetologists and taxonomy nerds. It also has conservation implications.
As a single species, the king cobra population was considered widespread, found throughout India, southeast Asia, southern China, the Malay peninsula, Java, Sumatra, Borneo and up into the Philippines.
But of the now-known four species, two of them — the Luzon and Western Ghats king cobra (Ophiophagus kaalinga) — have extremely limited habitat ranges.
“We know that in the Philippines and the Western Ghatz (a region in western India), these are areas that are under high pressure” from human development and activity, Mahony said.
As apex predators, king cobras need a lot of room to roam, much like lions or wolves, to find enough food to survive, he explained.
“As their natural habitats are shrinking, there’s this urgent need now to determine how much land is left — how much space is left for these individual species — and are they at risk for extinction,” Mahony said.
Making the case to preserve habitat for snakes isn’t a particularly easy sell, though.
“There’s a lot of animals and organisms out there that people really don’t feel kinship towards. Mammals are easy, birds are pretty easy. Getting people to care about insects or worms or sometimes fish, or snakes for that matter, tends to be a bigger challenge,” said Sara Ruane, associate curator of reptiles and amphibians at the Field Museum.
In championing snakes, Ruane said she often points out their amazing adaptations. King cobras, for example, are the only snakes that build nests for their eggs — and they do it without having arms or fingers or claws.
“These snakes are able to build these nests of out debris — sticks, leaves — just by using their body coils to push things along. And these nests can be 4 by 4 feet tall and in diameter,” Ruane marveled.
Their role as an apex predator means king cobras have a cascading effect on an ecosystem, controlling populations of their prey, on down the food chain.
“When you protect that king cobra, you’re not just protecting one species, you’re protecting a huge amount of land that all these other animals and plants and organisms exist in as well,” Ruane added.
Other benefits are yet to be discovered.
Because snake venom — which has been harnessed for use in a number of life-saving drugs — is unique to each species, the discovery of three new king cobras opens the door to more medical advancements.
“So we don’t want these snakes to go away,” Ruane said.
The Field Museum’s 37 king cobra specimens, like these pictured, will need to be reclassified. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)
Museums around the world will now need to examine their king cobra specimens and reclassify them according to the new species.
The Field has a bit of a head start, in that 10 of its 37 king cobras were included in the research study and have been named. But that leaves another 27, some of which are literally a jumble of bones in a box and may defy identification until DNA techniques become more advanced and less expensive, Ruane said.
Kamei has already begun the process of re-labeling verified specimens, making sure they’re catalogued correctly for use by future researchers. The Luzon specimen will be getting a new home befitting its new status as soon as she can find a glass jar large enough to hold it.
It’s been exciting for her to have the Field’s historical collection play such an important role in the rewriting of the king cobra story, proof, she said, that specimens collected decades or even centuries ago remain “valid and studied by generations, who keep discovering secrets of the planet’s biodiversity.”
Here are the four king cobra species:
— Northern king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah): the “original” king cobra; found in eastern Pakistan, northern and eastern India, central Thailand, Indo-Burma, Indo-China and the Andaman Islands.
— Sunda king cobra (Ophiophagus bungarus): found in the Sunda Shelf region, including the Malay Peninsula, Greater Sunda Islands and parts of the southern Philippines.
— Western Ghats king cobra (Ophiophagus kaalinga): endemic to the Western Ghats region of southwestern India.
— Luzon king cobra (Ophiophagus salvatana): found exclusively on the Philippines island of Luzon.
Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 | [email protected]
