This article first appeared at ntv.de
The self-described “best-known biologist in the Netherlands”, Freek Vonk from the University of Amsterdam, posted a spectacular video on Instagram. Anyone who is afraid of snakes might not like the footage too much, as Vonk swims side by side with a gigantic snake in the clip. The biologist writes about the video that it is a new species of green anaconda. She is said to weigh over 200 kilos. “The biggest anaconda I’ve ever seen. A monster.”
“We discovered that the largest snake species in the world, the green anaconda, is actually made up of two different species,” says Vonk. “The green anacondas, which occur north of their range in South America, appear to belong to a completely different species. Although they look almost identical, the genetic difference between the two species is 5.5 percent, which is huge. For comparison: humans and Chimpanzees only differ genetically by about 2 percent.” The new species was given the Latin name Eunectes akayima, the “northern green anaconda.”
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