New Guinea Snake Species Named After Guns N' Roses Guitarist Slash

A newly discovered New Guinea groundsnake has been named Lielaphis slashi after Slash, the Guns N' Roses guitarist and lifelong reptile enthusiast.

A newly discovered snake from the forests of New Guinea now carries a little rock 'n' roll. Herpetologists at Chicago's Field Museum have named the species Lielaphis slashi — "Slash's groundsnake" — after Saul Hudson, the top-hatted Guns N' Roses guitarist known to the world as Slash.

The reddish-brown snake runs about 28 inches long and is non-venomous. Sara Ruane, the Field Museum's associate curator of herpetology and the study's senior author, has been a Guns N' Roses fan since first grade. "When I was twelve years old and got my copy of Reptiles Magazine in the mail, and it had a picture of Slash holding his pet reticulated python on the cover, I thought, 'This guy is so cool,'" she said. The species was formally described in the journal Zootaxa.

The specimen sat unidentified for years. Chris Austin of Louisiana State University collected the snake during night fieldwork in New Guinea back in 2006 — groundsnakes are nocturnal and emerge after sunset to hunt. Only when the team, led by first author Tianqi Huang, ran genetic analyses did they confirm the animal was its own species, distinct in both DNA and habitat preferences.

Slash, a lifelong reptile enthusiast, welcomed the honor. "As a long-time herpephile, I am extremely honored and humbled to have Lielaphis slashi from New Guinea named after me," he said. The snake uses large rear teeth to grip slippery-scaled lizards and reptile eggs rather than constricting prey, and it poses no threat to people. But its forest home is under pressure from coffee farming and mining — one reason Ruane argues that naming and describing species is the essential first step to protecting them.

Sources: Field Museum | Popular Science | Consequence