Variable Coloured Vine Snake

About the Variable Coloured Vine Snake

The variable colored vine snake (Ahaetulla anomala) is a species of opisthoglyphous (rear-fanged venomous) colubrid vine snake found in Bangladesh and India. It is the first reported sexually dichromatic snake from the Indian Subcontinent, and until 2017 was formerly regarded as a subspecies of the green vine snake, Ahaetulla nasuta.

This snake was first described by Thomas Nelson Annandale (the first director of the Zoological Survey of India) in 1906. It was later considered a subspecies of Ahaetulla nasuta in 1943. There has long been taxonomic confusion due to the sexually dimorphic coloring of species, with the green males resembling the long-nosed whip snake (Ahaetulla nasuta), while females are brown in color and physically resemble the brown-speckled whipsnake (Ahaetulla pulverulenta). To resolve this confusion, in 2017, a team of biologists conducted a molecular and morphological study of the snake, ultimately finding it to be a distinct species, closely related to its sister taxon Ahaetulla pulverulenta, as shown in the cladogram below (with possible paraphyletic species noted):

The status of Ahaetulla anomala as a separate species is still in dispute, as... Wikipedia →