Jakarta (ANTARA News) - The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has discovered a poisonous snake which has the ability to spontaneously change the colour of their skin like chameleons in Sungai Kapuas, Kalimantan.
The Kapuas-mud snake or Enhydris Gyii, was found by Dr Mark Auliya, a reptile expert from Germany`s Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig and two American scientists during a WWF project in Kalimantan.
"I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket. When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white," Dr Mark Auliya said in a press statement received by ANTARA News here on Monday.
The ability to change colour is normally possessed by only a few reptiles such as the chameleon but very rarely by a snake. The scientists are studying how the phenomenon works.
Auliya, who is also a WWF consultant, discovered two species of 50-centimeter-long poisonous snakes in the coastal and forest areas around the Kapuas River at the Betung Kerihun National Park, West Kalimantan.
The scientists believe the newly discovered snakes are endemic to the Kapuas River basin.
In the past 10 years, a total of 361 new species of animals and plants have been found on Kalimantan Island, in an area twice as large as Germany.
WWF Program Coordinator of the `Heart of Borneo` expedition Bambang Supriyanto said the Kapuas-Mud snake was discovered last year.
The experts needed to scientifically clarify the snake`s species and registered it with the International Animal Naming Commission.
"The discovery of the chameleon-like snake is one of the greatest mysteries of nature in Kalimantan. The ability of certain animals to change the color of their skin is something new the science has yet to unravel," Bambang Supriyanto said.
He said the discovery of the new species of snake had enriched Indonesia`s biodiversity which has the third largest forest area in the world after Brazil and Congo (formerly Zaire). However. But around 2.8 million hectares of Indonesia`s forest area disappear every year mainly due to illegal logging and forest fires.
WWF is worried that deforestation in Indonesia will cause the destruction of the country`s priceless genetic bank.
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