A new-to-science species of egg-eating snake has been documented in the forested mountains of southern Ethiopia, according to a recent study.
The snake, which has an ink-black body, bluish skin between its scales, and stark-white throat and belly, has been named the white-throated egg-eater (Dasypeltis albigularis). It’s nonvenomous, feeding entirely on bird eggs, which it cracks using specially adapted vertebrae in its throat before swallowing, the authors say.
Arthur Tiutenko of Germany’s University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, and his colleagues, first encountered a population of this snake in 2019 in the Harenna Forest, in the Bale Mountains. They collected a young female for identification and initially thought it was an African egg-eating snake (Dasypeltis atra), a similar black, nonvenomous species. But the team also noticed the juvenile had some unusual scales and coloration that differed from the known D. atra.
These observations prompted captive-breeding trials, where the researchers mated the female with a male African egg-eating snake, and saw that their offspring showed a mix of traits from both parents. Further genetic analysis and examination of more individuals seen on future field trips confirmed the snake in the Harenna Forest was indeed new to science.
“In the case of D. albigularis, it was a classic discovery, like in previous centuries, when one encounters an animal in a place previously not visited by researchers and recognizes it as something new,” Tiutenko told Mongabay by email.
To formally describe a new species, researchers would typically have to deposit a dead, preserved physical specimen, known as the holotype, in a museum collection. For Tiutenko’s team, though, this posed an ethical dilemma.
Some recent studies have relied on photos and videos alone to describe a species, but Tiutenko said this too has been criticized by the scientific community. He added that using a live individual to represent a species in a collection is also a bad idea, because such a specimen can escape, and its features can change over time as it ages. “And such values of an old animal that died years later and finally became preserved would almost certainly differ from those stated in the paper.”
Tiutenko said he didn’t want to euthanize a snake for the purpose of describing the species. So he waited for several years, until a dead snake showed up. “As soon as I found a dead specimen killed by local villagers, I could designate it as holotype and proceed with the publication,” he said.
Their analysis showed the white-throated egg-eater is likely endemic to the southern slope of the Somalian Plateau, frequenting natural forest, agricultural clearings, and village settlements. Tiutenko added it’s not yet confirmed whether the species is present in Bale Mountains National Park.
Human persecution remains the primary danger to the snake, Tiutenko noted.
“Although no dangerous snakes live in this area, people fear or disgust any snakes and kill them,” he said.
Banner image of Dasypeltis albigularis, by Tiutenko et al., 2026 (CC BY 4.0).
