
Snakes, with Prof Mark O’Shea
Instant Genius
00:00
What's the Biggest Species of Snake Out There at the Moment?
I've worked on every continent except Antarctica. And I've been involved in snake bite research as well. That was probably the main thing in behind my MBA, but in the Queen's birthday honours in 2020. How many species of snake are there? This is obviously in flux because taxonomy is always in a state of flux. My count at the moment is 4,032. Other people would have slightly different cancers whether you recognise particular species or whether you've seen a paper that's just been published. We described three new species earlier this year and raised three from synonymy where they'd been sunk. The molecular techniques sort of support or question the data you get from morphological examination
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