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- A team of herpetologists have described a new species of reddish-brown pit viper which has been found in a forest in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh. The discovery has been published in the March-April volume of the Russian Journal of Herpetology.
- It has been named as Trimeresurus arunachalensis. It is the second serpent to have been discovered in Arunachal Pradesh after the non-venomous crying keelback in the Lepa-Rada district in 2018. The new species has made Arunachal Pradesh the only Indian state to have a pit viper named after it.
- India had four brown pit vipers before the Arunachal Pradesh discovery. These are Malabar, horseshoe, hump-nosed and Himalayan pit vipers
- Pit vipers are a subfamily of venomous vipers found in Eurasia and the Americas. They are distinguished by the presence of a heat-sensing pit organ located between the eye and the nostril on both sides of the head.




