Salazar Slytherin has something Helga Hufflepuff and Rowena Ravenclaw don’t, but Godric Gryffindor does: a creature named for him.
Scientists have named a new snake species discovered in India after the founder of Hogwarts’ evil house. The serpent, which is green of course, is known as Trimeresurus salazar — or Salazar's pit viper.
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"The specific epithet is a noun in apposition for J.K. Rowling's fictional Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry's co-founder, Salazar Slytherin," wrote researchers led by the National Centre for Biological Science of Bangalore, India, in a new paper published in the journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.
For those not familiar with J.K. Rowling’s tales of Harry Potter and his friends — and enemies — Salazar Slytherin could speak to snakes.
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According to sciencealert.com, the discovery took so long because the region's biodiversity has been poorly documented. Also, pit vipers can look a lot like one another, which means species diversity can be overlooked.
Testing confirmed this is a new, separate species, and is "one of around 50 in its genus of venomous snakes named for the heat-sensing pits in their head that they use to navigate and hunt," sciencealert.com wrote.
In 2016, a spider was named Eriovixia gryffindori, because it looks like a wizard hat. And in 2014, a wasp was named Ampulex dementor, after the soul-eating enforcers of Azkaban prison.
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