Meet the Great Nicobar wolf snake: Endangered since day one, you won’t find it anywhere else on the planet. india news

Last updated:July 29, 2026, 18:55 IST

Meet Lycodon irwini, a new wolf snake on Great Nicobar Island, named after Steve Irwin. It is non-poisonous, shiny black, and is classified as endangered due to habitat threats.

While researching the Great Nicobar Island Development Project, reading about leatherback sea turtles and all aspects of the project (at least, from an environmental point of view), I realized that I did not have the knowledge necessary to even comment on it, let alone write an article on it. So, I asked about famous herpetologists of India, and the most recommended person on the subject was Mr. Romulus Whittaker – Padma Shri.

Mr. Whitaker, or Rom, as he asked me to call him, was and is a wealth of knowledge (they don’t call him the Snake-Man of India for nothing). Through calls, texts and mails, we became acquainted with each other, as he became acquainted with my ideas and projects, and then one day, in late February, he sent me a mail regarding the discovery and naming of the ‘Wolf Snake’ on Great Nicobar.

I would have published it then, but having little information about the island and the proposed project, I had to wait. US attacks on Iran in the middle of the talks changed the focus of the news, and the rest, while current, is history.

As the war rages on, and the Strait of Hormuz is blocked, I decided that I have waited, and waited, long enough, and now it is finally time to start my article.

The ‘cosmic’ introduction of the wolf snake

All the environmentalists I’ve talked to live for wildlife and the environment, it’s their passion, it’s their children. Rome is no different.

Despite this particular communication being on text, you could almost hear the cosmic excitement in his voice as he told me about a “spectacular new species of wolf snake” recently discovered in Great Nicobar. “Finding an endemic snake species is the proverbial tip of the biodiversity iceberg on Great Nicobar.”

‘Lycodon erwini‘: Grand Wolf Snake of Great Nicobar

Herpetologists have confirmed a new snake species from the rainforests of Great Nicobar Island and named it after Australian conservationist Steve Irwin, who died in 2006. Lycodon erwiniwas described in the peer-reviewed journal on 7 November 2025 evolutionary systematics By RS Naveen, Zeeshan A Mirza of the Max Planck Institute for Biology in Tübingen, and Girish Chaure And SR Chandramouli of Pondicherry University.

The snake is non-venomous, grows to about 1.2 meters and has a uniform, shiny black colour, which the authors have compared to polished obsidian. This author thinks the Snake looks almost like pure carbon fiber. It remained unknown as a distinct species for at least two centuries, until now it was thought to be a Southeast Asian relative found thousands of kilometers away.

The title of the paper is “A ‘crikey’ new snake,” A nod to Irwin’s catchphrase. species adjective, irwiniis a formal patronymic name. The authors wrote that the name honors Irwin because his dedication to wildlife education and conservation “has inspired naturalists and conservationists around the world, including the authors of this paper.”

On 4 September 2006, Irwin died after being struck in the chest by a stingray barb while filming a documentary on the Great Barrier Reef. He was 44 years old.

Lycodon erwini It joins a small list of species named for Irwin, which also includes Irwin’s tortoise (alessia irwini) and a snail, Crikey Stewirwini. The Wildlife Society put the new snake on the cover of its December 2025 issue, using a photograph taken by co-author Girish Chaure.

Citation for paper titled A ‘Crikey’ New Snake: RS, Naveen and Mirza, Zeeshan and Chaure, Girish and SR, Chandramouli. (2025). A ‘crikey’ new snake: an insular Lycodon Fitzinger, 1826 (Squamata, Colubridae) from the Nicobar Archipelago, India. Evolutionary Systematics. 9. 221-228. 10.3897/evolsyst.9.170645.

what makes it different

l irwini belongs to the family colubridaeA group of mostly nocturnal, largely harmless snakes that are often confused with poisonous kraits, a confusion has led people to kill wolf snakes.

The snout–vent length of the species examined by the authors measured 71 to 84 centimeters, with the largest specimen, an adult female holotype, reaching 119.7 centimeters including its tail. The tail tapers to a light terminal scale and makes up 20 to 23 percent of the total body length.

The authors recorded dorsal scale rows in a 17-17-15 pattern, which were smooth at the front of the body and slightly curved at the rear; 223 to 238 ventral scales; and 78 to 94 paired subcaudal scales.

The head is rectangular and slightly separated from the neck. The dorsal surface is dark shiny black, becoming brownish black below and with light cream coating on the sides. For years, this population was classified as the southern outskirts. Lycodon subcinctusMalayan banded wolf snake, a species found in mainland and insular Southeast Asia. The authors combined scale counts and body proportions with DNA analysis and found the Great Nicobar population to be a genetically distinct lineage that had been isolated on the island for thousands of years.

A lonely island, and a small

Lycodon erwini It is known only from Great Nicobar Island, about 190 kilometers north of Sumatra and about 1,300 kilometers south-east of the Indian mainland. The holotype was collected in moist evergreen forest near the south-eastern coast of the island, close to Galathea Bay and Galathea National Park, inside the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve.

UNESCO designated the reserve under its Man and the Biosphere program in 2013. It covers approximately 103,870 hectares, approximately 85 percent of the island, and is home to over 1,800 recorded species, including Nicobar ScrubfowlThe Nicobar long-tailed macaque, salt water crocodile, reticulated python And giant leatherback sea turtle.

On that note, dear reader, it would be remiss of me not to mention that it was Padmashree Romulus Whittaker who proposed to make Great Nicobar one of the biosphere reserves of India in 1978 (along with the Gulf of Mannar), and Great Nicobar was declared under UNESCO’s Man and Biosphere Program in 2013.

It has been endangered since the day it was named.

The authors applied IUCN criteria and classified Lycodon erwini As endangered based on three factors: it is known from a single island, its habitat area is estimated to be less than 500 square kilometers, and is endangered. Pressure The extent and quality of that habitat is expected to continue to decline in its habitat.

He Pressure It has a name and a price tag. In 2021, NITI Aayog unveiled the Great Nicobar Development Plan, with a budget of approximately ₹81,000 crore. The plan includes an international container transshipment port at Galathea Bay, a greenfield township, a greenfield commercial airport and a 450 MVA gas and solar power plant, as well as new roads on the southern tip of the island.

snake in the middle

Wolf snakes prey on frogs, lizards, small mammals, and other snakes, and are considered nocturnal like the rest of their genus, which now has about 74 recognized species in Central, South, and Southeast Asia.

Lycodon erwini The preferred habitat, moist evergreen forest with dark leaf litter, is the same terrain most exposed to the clearance work required by the development plan.

has no other population Lycodon erwini Anywhere else on the planet. Whatever happens in that part of the forest around Galathea Bay happens to the entire species.

As Rome says, “We have yet to scratch the surface of what is on that island, zoologically and botanically, before the inevitable total destruction begins.”

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