Scientists found a giant snake in the Amazon rainforest that’s basically a twin of another giant snake they already knew about! This new snake is its own species, even though they look almost exactly alike.
These giant snakes are green anacondas, and they can grow up to 20 feet long! The new kind of anaconda is called the “northern green anaconda” and lives in Ecuador. Scientists think these two snake types split apart millions of years ago, but their bodies never really changed much.
The scientists were studying these snakes to see how pollution from oil spills affects the rainforest. They found that some of the snakes were polluted by the oil, which isn’t good for them or the environment.
Fry, an Australian professor of biology at the University of Queensland, has been studying anaconda species in South America for almost 20 years. He told Reuters that the discovery shows that the two species split from each other around 10 million years ago.
“But the really amazing part was, despite this genetic difference, and despite their long period of divergence, the two animals look exactly the same,” he said.
Even though green anaconda snakes look very similar, there is a genetic difference of 5.5%, which surprised the scientists.
“Which is an incredible amount of genetic difference, particularly when you put it in the context that we’re only 2% different from chimpanzees,” Fry said.
Anacondas provide valuable information about the ecological health of the area and the potential impacts of oil spills on human health, Fry said.
Some of the snakes they studied in parts of Ecuador were heavily polluted by oil spills, and the anacondas and arapaima fish are accumulating a large amount of petrochemical metals, he added.
“That means if arapaima fish are gathering these metals from oil spills, pregnant women should avoid eating them. It’s similar to how women avoid salmon and tuna in other places because of methylmercury concerns,” he explained.
