Overview
- The description was published January 5 in Zootaxa by a team led by Mizoram University professor HT Lalremsanga with collaborators from Russia, Germany and Vietnam.
- The study corrects a long-standing misidentification that had grouped Mizoram specimens with a widespread Southeast Asian Calamaria.
- The species is confirmed from multiple sites within Mizoram and researchers call for targeted surveys in Manipur, Nagaland, Assam and Bangladesh’s Chittagong region.
- The snake is non-venomous, nocturnal and semi-fossorial, inhabiting humid forested hills at 670–1,295 metres and occurring even near settlements such as the Mizoram University campus.
- The paper also presents an updated checklist of Mizoram’s herpetofauna at 169 species, and the authors tentatively assess the new snake as Least Concern based on its presence at several localities.