World's longest snake identified as four different species – not one

The world's longest snake, the king cobra, has been identified as four species – not just one. The venomous snakes can grow up to a staggering 5.6 metres in length.

Lead author P Gowri Shankar and a team of researchers have been studying king cobras for almost two decades and were stunned to identify "four geographically separate lineages as confirmed candidate species (CCS)".

Following up on their 2021 discovery, the team have now found definitive differences in the snakes' physicality and the pattern of their scales.

Combining both of their studies, they have now recategorised the snakes into new categories: the Northern king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah), Sunda king cobra (Ophiophagus bungarus), Western Ghats king cobra (Ophiophagus kaalinga) and Luzon king cobra (Ophiophagus salvatana).

"Here, as a follow up to Gowri Shankar et al.’s (2021) study, we present a formal taxonomic revision of the genus Ophiophagus, morphological diagnoses and descriptions of these four lineages, and describe two as new species. Our nomenclatural and taxonomic decisions have extensive implications for the content, diversity and distribution of members of this genus, as well as the management of snakebite, species conservation and prospects for future research," the scientists wrote.

Study co-author Wolfgang Wüster, a herpetologist at Bangor University told Mongabay: "Now that we know that the populations in the Philippines and the Western Ghats are distinct species, restricted to relatively small areas that are also biodiversity hotspots that have suffered very high rate of deforestation and habitat loss … we need to consider their conservation needs separately from those of the more widespread northern and Sunda species."

How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel

Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter

Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.