Ashe's Spitting Cobra

About the Ashe's Spitting Cobra

Naja ashei, commonly known as Ashe's spitting cobra or the giant spitting cobra, is a species of venomous snake in the family Elapidae. The species is native to Africa. It is the world's largest species of spitting cobra.

The generic name, Naja, is a Latinisation of the Sanskrit word nāgá (नाग), meaning "serpent". The specific epithet, ashei, honors the late James Ashe, who founded the Bio-Ken Snake Farm and was one of the first experts to suggest N. ashei was a new species. Its differences from other spitting cobras were recognized in the 1960s, but it was initially regarded by most as merely a brown-coloured form of the black-necked spitting cobra (N. nigricollis). Thus, N. ashei was only classified as a distinct species in 2007, by Wolfgang Wüster (Bangor University, Wales) and Donald Broadley (Biodiversity Foundation for Africa). Royjan Taylor (Director of the Bio-Ken Snake Farm in Watamu, Kenya) was instrumental in providing specimens, among them the holotype.

The giant spitting cobra is most closely related to the Mozambique spitting cobra (N. mossambica), which with this species forms a sister taxon to N. nigricollis. Naja ashei... Wikipedia →