Researchers in the Amazon have discovered the world's largest snake species - a huge green anaconda - in the rainforests of Ecuador, which separated from its closest relatives 10 million years ago, although it still looks almost identical. This was reported by Reuters, according to UNN.
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There was thought to be only one species of green anaconda in the wild, Eunectes murinus, but the scientific journal Diversity this month revealed that the new "northern green anaconda" belongs to a different, new species, Eunectes akiyama.
Fry, an Australian professor of biology at the University of Queensland who has been researching anaconda species found in South America for nearly 20 years, told Reuters that the discovery allows them to show that the two species split off from each other nearly 10 million years ago.
But the truly amazing thing was that, despite this genetic difference and the long period of divergence, the two animals are absolutely identical
Although visually green anacondas are very similar, the genetic difference is 5.5%, which surprised scientists.
That's an incredible amount of genetic variation, especially when you put it in the context that we're only 2% different from chimpanzees
Anacondas are incredibly useful sources of information for the ecological health of the region and the potential human health impacts of oil spills in the region, Fry said.
Some of the snakes they studied in parts of Ecuador were heavily contaminated by oil spills, and anacondas and arapaima fish accumulate large amounts of petrochemical metals, he added.
This means that if the arapaima fish accumulates these metals leaking from oil, pregnant women should avoid them, just as women avoid salmon, tuna because of the fear of methylmercury