Freek Vonk makes a special discovery in Australia: ‘Brand new for science’ | Nature

Australia, one of my favorite destinations, is rugged, diverse and full of venomous animals. I could never have imagined that I would make a very special discovery on one of those Australia trips.

It had been a wonderful shooting day. My crew and I were able to capture fantastic sea snakes and the mood was right. Our boat docked again in the harbor of Weipa, a mining town in northeastern Australia. Tired but satisfied I walked down the jetty towards my jeep. Time to relax, I thought.

Until I saw something crawling away at my feet. There writhed a small black-and-white-ringed snake, less than four feet long and as thick as a big pencil. A bandy bandy; I recognized that stripe pattern, the shiny skin and the tiny eyes right away. The black and white warning pattern was very similar to that of the sea snakes we had filmed.

Bandy bandies, as their skin pattern suggests, are venomous, but unlike sea snakes, they are not dangerous to humans. Their venom is weak and their mouths are too small to bite us. Bandy bandies are highly specialized hunters that only chase worm snakes. These cobra-like snakes dig underground tunnels.

What was this animal doing here, on a concrete block by the sea? I saw the statement further down. Nearby was a large pile of bauxite rubble, ready to be shipped. There, the snake most likely crawled out after surviving an excavation at the bauxite mining site.

There was one more thing that caught my attention. At that time, there were five types of bandy bandy known to science, but this one didn’t seem to be quite the same. Not surprising in itself, because many differences can also occur within a species. But with all my experience with snakes, I got a strong suspicion that there was more going on here.

I notified fellow Australian biologists and the rest is history. After a few years of morphological and genetic research and a few more new sightings of the same kind of bandy-bandy, the suspicion was confirmed: the snake crawling around on a scaffolding was brand new to science!

In fact, as soon as he was discovered, he was already threatened. This is due to their low visibility, small range and local mining operations that destroy their habitat. Now that we know that there are also bandy-bandies here, hopefully we will be able to protect them. It was a dream to be able to describe a new species after years of research.

Of course I didn’t know that that day on the jetty. I went to have a beer with the guys on a successful shooting day.

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