Some scientists spend two decades staring at a snake before they finally commit to a name. That’s exactly what happened with a small reddish-brown reptile from Papua New Guinea. A researcher first caught it back in 2006, and only now, twenty years later, has it been given its official surname: Lielaphis slashi, in honor of the Guns N’ Roses guitarist.
The species is officially called Lielaphis slashi, just described in the journal Zootaxa. It was described by an international team led by Louisiana State University and Chicago’s Field Museum. It’s a ground snake about 71 centimeters (28 inches) long, with a smooth reddish-brown back and a plain white or cream belly. It has no flashy patterns, and, in fact, no movie-villain fangs either: it’s completely harmless to humans.
Why did Lielaphis slashi take 20 years to get a name?
Biologist Christopher Austin caught the snake in 2006, during a field expedition. It happened in a largely undisturbed secondary forest in Sandaun Province, in northern New Guinea. At the time, it looked like “just another” local ground snake. However, several species in the genus Lielaphis look nearly identical to the naked eye. That’s why it took years of anatomical comparisons. Still, it also took genetic analysis to confirm this specimen didn’t match any previously described species. Moreover, with its publication, the genus Lielaphis now counts 20 recognized species.
Sara Ruane, associate curator of herpetology at the Field Museum and senior author of the study, admits that watching these animals in the wild is genuinely tough: “It’s incredibly hard to observe snakes in the wild before they slither away, so our knowledge about L. slashi is still limited”. Still, researchers do know what those unusually large rear teeth are for. They’re used for grabbing and eating small, slippery-scaled lizards, plus the eggs of other reptiles.
So why name it after a rock star?
Here’s the fun part of the story. Ruane recalls that at age 12 she got a reptile magazine with Slash on the cover, holding his pet python. That image stuck with her for good. In fact, the musician has been a genuine reptile enthusiast since childhood. He keeps snakes of his own and has spent years publicly backing zoos and natural history museums. Therefore, the team decided to honor him by attaching his name to the new species.
Slash himself took the news exactly the way you’d hope: “As a long-time herpephile, I am extremely honored and humbled to have Lielaphis slashi from New Guinea named after me. It is really exciting, I never would have imagined this moment would arrive,” the guitarist said.
Beyond the fun headline, the story of L. slashi is a good reminder of something we tend to forget. We’re still discovering new species every year, even fairly large animals. However, the real “discovery” often doesn’t happen in the jungle but much later, in a lab, comparing DNA sequences. In fact, New Guinea’s rainforest, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, is still hiding surprises under the leaf litter. It happened before, for instance, with the lizard species named after Syrax, Rhaenyra’s dragon. And every once in a while, those surprises end up named after a rock guitarist.