New worm-eating snake named after Mizoram herpetologist

GUWAHATI

The jungles of Mizoram and neighbouring Myanmar have yielded a new-to-science snake that relishes worms and prefers to stay underground.

The snake, Trachischium lalremsangai, has been described in the international Herpetozoa journal of the Austrian Herpetological Society by a team of four scientists from two continents. They are Virender K. Bhardwaj, Amit K. Bal, and Chhangte L. Tluanga from Mizoram University and Zeeshan A. Mirza from Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Biology.

The researchers named their find after Hmar Tlawmte Lalremsanga, a professor of Zoology at Mizoram University, for his “remarkable contributions to herpetology in India”, mentoring students, and fostering research collaborations within the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot.

Measuring about 2.4 million square kilometres, this hotspot covers the northeastern region south of the Brahmaputra River, parts of Bangladesh, China, Malaysia, and all of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.

According to the researchers, the new species of snake from the genus Trachischium was described based on two specimens. The Mizoram University team found the first specimen during an expedition to the 100 sq. km Murlen National Park close to Mizoram’s 510-km border with Myanmar.

The researchers noted that this snake bore two scales behind the eye and a light-brown belly, unlike related species that bear a dark brown to black belly. They generated DNA sequences from the specimen, which confirmed its distinctiveness.

This data was shared with Zeeshan Mirza, who stumbled upon a second specimen of the species in discussion among the collections at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco during a research visit in September 2025. The second specimen had been collected from Haka Township in Myanmar’s Chin State in 2007, and was identified as Trachischium reticulata, to which the specimen observed in Murlen National Park showed affinity.

“Snakes belonging to the genus Trachischium are commonly known as slender snakes or worm-eating snakes. They are small and tend to live underground in loose soil. These harmless snakes primarily feed on earthworms, and because they spend most of their lives underground, much remains to be learned about their biology,” the study said.

Trachischium lalremsangai is the eleventh species of its ilk found across the northeast and throughout the Himalayas.