4-foot-long island predator found ‘enveloping’ an attacker. It’s a new species
On a small island of Papua New Guinea, a hawk tried to attack a “large” 4-foot-long predator but ended up becoming its prey instead. A scientist stumbled up on the scene and watched the “shiny” animal “enveloping” its attacker.
He didn’t know it at the time, but he’d just discovered a new species.
Fred Kraus visited Sudest Island as part of an ongoing project to document the region’s reptile diversity. He was particularly interested in a group of tree-dwelling snakes with a historically “confusing” and “poorly understood” classification system, he wrote in a study published April 4 in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa.
During his visit to the island, Kraus saw several jet-black snakes in the rainforest and around villages, but the animals were “difficult to capture,” the study said. Eventually, he tracked down six of these snakes.
At first, Kraus thought these black snakes were the same species as a nearby island, but the closer he looked, the more unique features he noticed. He realized he’d discovered a new species: Dendrelaphis anthracina, or the coal black tree snake.
Coal black tree snakes are considered “large,” reaching about 4 feet, 8 inches long, the study said. They have black eyes with a “uniformly white” chin.
Photos show the new species after being preserved. Kraus said he named the new species after the Latin word for “coal black” because of its “shiny black coloration.”
Coal black tree snakes “have a wide ecological tolerance ranging from rainforest to villages and gardens established by humans,” Kraus wrote. One snake was found “wrapped around a goshawk that had apparently attacked it and had been rendered immobile by the snake’s enveloping defensive reaction.”
So far, the new species has only been found on Sudest Island, an island off the southeastern coast of mainland Papua New Guinea and northeast of Australia, but “may eventually be found on smaller islands” nearby, the study said.
The new species was identified by its coloring, genitalia, scale pattern and other subtle physical features, Kraus said. The study did not include a DNA analysis of the new species.
Kraus also discovered three more species of snakes, one each on Misima Island, Rossel Island and Woodlark Island.
This story was originally published April 7, 2025 at 10:47 AM with the headline "4-foot-long island predator found ‘enveloping’ an attacker. It’s a new species."
