If there’s one thing Australia is known for globally, it’s our terrifying critters. We have SO. MANY. CRITTERS. THAT. LOOK. UNSAFE. While we generally DGAF about the scary-yet-harmless ones as Aussies (lol at people who are scared of Huntsmen spiders), there are absolutely plenty that can kill or seriously injure you, and even the toughest, most Steve Irwiny Australian has a bit of a fear about those poisony bois.
Well we have a new poisony boi to be afraid of – the Vermicella Parscauda, a snake discovered by University of Queensland biologist Bryan Fry on a loading wharf in Weipa on the Cape York Peninsula. It’s around 30-40cm long, and has thin white bands along it’s body. So sucked in if you saw this guy on some hike once, you could have been famous for discovering a new species. Instead, old mate Bryan Fry has stolen your thunder.
“We were actually out looking for sea snakes and when we came back into the dock that night, there is a little snake at the end of the concrete dock,” he told the TODAY Show.
“We recognised it immediately as a bandy bandy, which is a burrowing snake. We were trying to figure out why is this snake hanging out on a concrete boat ramp, but we noticed that we were right next to Rio Tinto’s big ship loader where they were putting all the bauxite mine on. It had crawled out from a pile of rubble there. We found a couple more in the wild.”
So basically this new snake hitched a ride on a ship loader, much like hitching a ride in the boot of a car which is my absolute deepest, gravest fear and something that absolutely will never happen given I live in the middle of a large city, yet it definitely occupies my brain space at least once a fortnight.
But enough scary talk! Look at it’s cute face.
I’m gonna boop it’s snoot and kiss it.
Professor Fry and his team have only found six specimens of the new snake, and because they might only be living in the mining area this one hitched a ride out of, it means they may very well be endangered.
“It is very unique, relative to all of the other bandy bandies, and it reinforces how little we really know about our biodiversity and how much we might be losing through short-term economic activities. You can only dig a hole in the ground one time, but if you lose your biodiversity, that is forever, and the reason that we should care about this is that these kinds of animals, venomous animals, are a rich source of natural compounds.
Oh god, he got me right in the emotional groin with that one. I want to quit my job and go save THIS SNAKE ONLY.
