A team of researchers and herpetologists exploring the Sahyadris and Western ghats in Maharashtra have discovered five new species of vine snake, and the research paper regarding this was recently published in a leading international scientific journal.

The discovery of the five new species has been successful due to a long drawn research in the area for close to a decade in the ecologically rich Sahyadri mountain ranges. Asian vine snakes, distributed throughout Asia, belong to the genus Ahaetulla and the recently described Proahaetulla. Once the team started its research, they were surprised to discover that the common green vine snake (Ahaetulla nasuta) was a complex species comprising several cryptic species.