New snake species found with color shifting abilities

Chameleon snake is forced to reveal its true colours
By Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter

AS IF snakes were not scary enough already, a new poisonous species has been discovered that can change colour in order to camouflage itself.

The chameleon-like ability to change colour is well known among reptiles but has rarely been observed in snakes before now.

Scientists who discovered the snake, a member of the Enhydris genus composed of 22 species, named it the Kapuas mud snake after the wetland and swamp forest area around the Kapuas River where is was found in the Betung Kerihun National Park, an area in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo.

Mark Auliya, a reptile specialist hunting for specimens, said: “I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket. When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white.”

Dr Auliya, of the Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig in Germany and a consultant for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), collected two of the 2ft (0.6m) snakes. Most of the species in the Enhydris genus have a very limited range, suggesting that the newly discovered species may not occur anywhere else except the Kapuas River drainage system.

Stuart Chapman, of the WWF, which is supporting conservation work in Borneo, said: “The discovery of the ‘chameleon’ snake exposes one of nature’s best-kept secrets deep in the heart of Borneo. Its ability to change colour has kept it hidden from science until now. I guess it just picked the wrong colour that day.”

Scientists believe that the Kapuas mud snake eats rats, mice and possibly fish.

Borneo’s wildlife is so rich that 361 new species of animals and plants have been discovered in the past decade, three every month. However, WWF gave a warning that the new species was already under threat as the forested area of Borneo has been reduced by 25 per cent since the mid-1980s.

Link

I'd like to see some pics...

Yes, pics to back up this claim would be nice.

Cool huh!!! LOL!!!

I did a little research on this. Here is a link to the paper in which he described the snake. Publication date was December 2005. There is one color photograph within the document.
http://www.fieldmuseum.org/research_...uliya_2005.pdf

Mention of the color changing observation is basically anecdotal. A short paragraph at the end of the paper mentions the observation occurring in 2003. Perhaps the quote from the article is a verbal one from the author speaking with Auliya, but the paper only says after a period of time, it doesn't specifically say a few minutes later.

The ability to shift coloration is common among many species of snakes, but the ability to effect that change rapidly is rather uncommon. In the vast majority of cases the color change is attributed to the effects of photoperiod and takes 90 minutes or more to complete. An exception to this is Crotalus viridis which has been observed to shift color from dark to light in as little as a few minutes in response to temperature changes or increased activity.

I believe the author of the article, or perhaps the fellow from the World Wildlife Fund, came up with the "chameleon like" analogy. Auliya himself, at least publicly, never alluded to the idea that it was an intentional change of color for the purpose of camouflage, or otherwise the result of a physical effort on the part of the snake.
It appears he considered it an interesting aspect of its physiology, but not important enough to warrant detailed mention in the published description of the species.

BBC Article

That BBC article has a picture of it. I will also post the picture in the forum if I can:

SO are we talking changing actual colors here, or changing shading?

Cant believe the "reddish-brown snake turned almost white"

about this snake. Describes complete color change..............

A snake with the ability to change its colour has been found in the rainforested heart of Borneo.
Researchers from Germany and the US discovered the water snake's chameleon-like behaviour by accident when they put it into a dark bucket.
The environmental group WWF, which supports conservation work in Borneo, says wildlife in the region is threatened by deforestation.
It believes the newly-described snake may exist only in one river basin.
Found in the Kapuas river in the Betung Kerihun National Park in Kalimantan (the Indonesian portion of Borneo), it belongs to the Enhydris genus of rear-fanged water snakes and has been named E. gyii.
It is about 50cm [18 inches] long, and poisonous.
Bucket research

The discovery of the 'chameleon" snake exposes one of nature's best kept secrets deep in the heart of Borneo

Stuart Chapman, WWF
The new species was described by Mark Auliya from the Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig in Bonn, and John Murphy and Harold Voris from the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.
It was Dr Auliya, a consultant for WWF, who discovered serendipitously its colour-changing capacity.
"I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket," he said. "When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white."
Unlike the chameleon, it is presumably not changing colour for camouflage.
In the last 10 years, more than 350 new animal and plant species have been discovered on Borneo.
"The discovery of the 'chameleon' snake exposes one of nature's best kept secrets deep in the heart of Borneo," said Stuart Chapman, WWF's international coordinator for the island.
The environmental group warns that the home of the new snake is threatened, as Borneo's forest cover has declined from 75% in the mid-1980s to about 50% today.

If someone in the pet trade ever got a hold of a pair of those...

This is an amazing and wonderful discovery. I hope they continue to discover more new species of snakes there.