A
new species of snake that feeds exclusively on birds’ eggs has been described from the Harenna Forest in Ethiopia, one of the last substantial tracts of natural forest left in the Horn of Africa.
Named Dasypeltis albigularis, or the ‘White-throated Egg-eater’, the species belongs to a remarkable group of harmless African snakes that survive entirely on a diet of eggs, using specially adapted vertebrae in the throat to crack the shell before swallowing.
It joins around 20 other known species in the genus Dasypeltis, most of which are notoriously difficult to tell apart, since many are uniformly black, brown or grey with few obvious external differences.
The new species is superficially similar to the so-called Montane Egg-eater, Dasypeltis atra, a black-coloured snake found in forests across East Africa, but genetic analysis of both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA showed the two are as distinct from one another.
The investigation began when Dr Tiutenko acquired a juvenile female snake from a local collaborator in the Harenna Forest. “I received a juvenile female of an egg-eater that appeared to me to be an already known species, and I started looking for a male to breed it,” he explained. “As she grew to adult size, I noticed morphological differences.”
To test whether those differences reflected a genuine biological distinction, Dr Tiutenko paired the female with a male of the closely related species she resembled. “I crossed them nevertheless, to see how the offspring would turn out and how her characteristics would be inherited,” he said.
The resulting hybrid offspring displayed a mix of traits from both parents, providing early evidence that the Harenna Forest snake was something new. Confirming the discovery with a formal description ultimately took seven years, drawing on morphological comparisons, DNA sequencing and captive breeding observations.
Dasypeltis albigularis can be distinguished from its relatives by the pale, sometimes bluish-tinged skin visible between its scales and a distinctive white throat and belly – a feature reflected in its scientific name, which means “white-throated” in Latin.
Unlike some of its relatives, it also appears to lack the ability to produce the rasping, hissing sound that many egg-eating snakes use to fend off predators by rubbing their scales together. Females of the new species reach up to 92 cm in length, somewhat smaller than D. atra and its other closest relatives.
The snake lives in dense forest between 1,500 and 1,700 metres above sea level, in an area whose undergrowth includes wild coffee plants, and feeds on the eggs of tree-nesting birds.
The description of Dasypeltis albigularis adds to a long list of species Dr Tiutenko has helped bring to scientific attention. “This is my 20th taxon that I have named and described,” he noted, adding that several more await formal publication: “I now have five or six species, and one subgenus, in the queue.”
Original study:
Tiutenko A, Heller TL, Bates MF (2026) A new species of ‘black’ egg-eating snake of the genus
Dasypeltis Wagler (Squamata, Colubridae, Colubrinae, Boigini). Herpetozoa 39: 343-366.
https://doi.org/10.3897/herpetozoa.39.e205043