A new species of snake has been discovered in the Western Ghats. The snake was first spotted by nature enthusiasts in Amboli village in Maharashtra in 2001. The snake is predominantly bronze coloured, arboreal and when aggressive, expand their skin to reveal a blue coloured skin between the scales.
In 2003, Varad Giri, a deputy director and curator of the herpetological collection with the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) saw a similar snake during his visit to Goa and took back a specimen to BNHS. In 2009, Gernot Vogel, an expert on snake taxonomy from Goa visited BNHS to study snake specimen and noted that the snake was a new species. The new species has a black coloured stripe behind the eye that barely extends to the neck). The snake belongs to the genus Dendrelaphis and it has been named Dendralaphis girii after Giri.
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