Mangshan soldering iron head -Viperaceae Original spearhead viper genus
[Animal Introduction]:
Mangshan soldering iron head is also called Mangshan original spearhead viper , the total length can reach 2m and the general weight is about 3 kg. It is a viper family under the order of the Viper family. There are vipers. It is mainly distributed in Hunan Province, China, and no subspecies have been confirmed.
Mangshan soldering iron head is named by Chen Yuanhui and Zhao Ermi . It is an endangered species with priority protection at the international level.
head is slightly triangular, with narrow and round kiss end, and the kiss scales are almost triangular. The head and back are all small scales, smooth; upper lip scales are 7 (2-2-3), the first one is larger, the second one is the smallest, the third one is the largest, and the lower lip scales are 15 (or 16); the orbital scales are larger, the anterior orbital scales are 2 narrow and long, the posterior orbital scales are very small, and the posterior orbital lower scales are very long; the cheek scales are smaller. The dorsal scales are 25-25-17, with edges; 189 abdominal scales, 1 anal scale, 62 pairs of tail scales, and a single end. The whole body is dark brown, mixed with yellow-green or rust-colored small dots, forming fine reticles, with yellow-green horizontal spots on the back, the middle part of the horizontal spots (the middle part of the dorsal line) expands, with brown dots in the center, and the back of the tail of the juvenile body is light yellow. Distributed in Hunan (Yizhang Mangshan).
[External Characteristics]:
Mangshan soldering iron head snake head Mangshan soldering iron head snake The head is triangular, shaped like a piece of soldering iron. The tail is white, so it is also called the Mangshan White-tailed Snake. The whole body is dark brown, mixed with very small yellow-green or rust-colored dots, forming a fine mesh impression. Part of the dorsal scale is yellow-green, gathering into agglomeration, forming lichen-like spots, which are equidistant from the black-brown color and running through the tail of the body; left and right lichen-like spots are connected at the dorsal midline, forming complete transverse lines or slightly interlaced front and back.
But unlike pythons, Mangshan soldering iron head is a poisonous snake. It belongs to the Viper family , the fierce giant viper , the weird rattlesnake , and the charming bamboo leaf green snake are all its cousins. They are either ugly or bright and dazzling, but they are all famous venomous snakes or even extremely venomous snakes that take their lives.
Five years of searching made Chen Yuanhui lucky to see this legendary whitetail snake for the first time. Compared with others, he seems to be very lucky. Yao people have lived in secluded places on high mountains and ridges for generations, and are accompanied by monkeys and monkeys and birds are neighbors. They regard " Little Green Dragon " as their brother and regard it as their totem. But for thousands of years, the little green dragon with a white tail is just the protagonist in ancient legends, and people will never be able to see it in the mortal world. This meeting aroused Chen Yuanhui's countless expectations. To understand Mangshan soldering iron head, what is needed is not a meeting, but in-depth observation.
The bite marks on the employee who was bitten by Mangshan soldering iron head are still fresh in memory of Chen Yuanhui. Faced with such strange poisonous snakes, everything is unknown. Chen Yuanhui has unique natural advantages for the endemic species of Mangshan . Research on Mangshan soldering iron heads has transformed Chen Yuanhui from a doctor to the more famous " Snake Dr. ". This role transformation has left him with nine deaths.
The last injury almost killed him. After escaping from death, he lost a piece of his finger, and this time he also gained a deeper understanding of the toxicity of Mangshan iron-headed snake, which happened in the summer three years ago.
[Life habits]:
Food: The entire biological world is a big food chain, and Mangshan soldering iron head is also in it. Although it is huge and has developed poison glands, it also has natural enemies. Especially when it is still a little snake, it is always threatened by life. Various eagles and eagles, weasel , pig badger are all mortal enemies of snake . Newborn snakes often become their delicious dishes as soon as they are born.
[Growth and Reproduction]:
20 to 27 eggs are laid from late June to July, the eggs are white and oval, with egg diameter of 34-38mm×50-66mm, and the weight is 31-40g. After laying eggs, snakes have the habit of protecting and incubating eggs.At a temperature of 25° to 30°C, snakes hatched in about 60 days. The total length of the first hatched snake is 330 to 460mm and weighs 15 to 35g.
Following the discovery of Guangdong's first male " snake panda " in Shaoguan in 2007, the Shaoguan Forestry Department recently discovered a female Mangshan iron-headed snake again. These two major discoveries broke the common understanding that many scholars believed that this unique Chinese snake was only found in Mangshan, Hunan, and added a new record of the distribution of this rare snake in Guangdong Province.
Experts are conducting artificial domestication experiments on this rare pair of "little green dragons". The next step will be to conduct artificial breeding of iron-headed snakes in Guangdong for the first artificial breeding of Mangshan soldering iron-headed snakes in Guangdong. [2] On September 11, 2010, 11 Mangshan iron-headed snakes hatched at the Feidong Snake Breeding Base of Hefei Wildlife Park in Anhui, providing more help for human research.
[Habitat environment]:
Mangshan soldering iron head lives under the woods in mountainous areas with an altitude of 700 to 1100m. Mangshan in Yizhang County, Hunan Province, China is the kingdom of snakes. Snakes are a much older species on Earth than humans. It is speculated that there were probably snakes in the Jurassic 150 million years ago. In other words, Mangshan, which was produced during the Yanshan orogenic movement, has become a habitat for snakes since its birth. In this vast mountain, there is a mysterious giant poisonous snake hidden for thousands of years.
[Discovery Name]:
One day in 1984, an employee in the forest area was bitten by a snake and found Chen Yuanhui, the most famous doctor in the local area to treat snake venom. Because no matter what snake venom, he could cure it in one week. When Chen Yuanhui checked the patient's wound, he found that the bite mark was huge. Only such a large venomous snake, such as the five-step snake, had such a large venomous snake, but the snake venom in the patient's body was dangerous, even worse than the five-step snake. According to the employee's description, the snake biting him was yellow-brown and had a white tail. Obviously, this is not a five-step snake, so what snake was biting him?
Chen Yuanhui searched the information and could not find the species corresponding to the snake he described. Chen Yuanhui, who thought he was good at treating snake venom, took more than a month to remove the snake venom from the employee's body. The huge toxicity aroused Chen Yuanhui's curiosity in searching for this poisonous snake. The snake with a white tail was deeply imprinted in his mind. From then on, he began to look for this highly venomous white-tailed snake.
Everyone knows that Dr. Chen is looking for a strange snake. Every time he catches a snake he doesn't know, he will send it to Chen Yuanhui to see if it is the whitetail snake he is looking for. Every time you open the pocket of the snake, it is a hope to open, but every time the answer is a disappointment. Five years have passed like this. Does the whitetails really exist? Or is it the hallucination of the bitten employee? However, the huge bite marks and unique toxicity on the bitten employee made him firmly believe that the whitetail snake must live in this deep mountain.
In early September 1989, an employee of the Mangshan Forest Management Bureau found a nest of strange little snakes and two snakes in the Jiashui River Valley in the protected area. They all have a white tail. After hearing the news, Chen Yuanhui immediately realized that this was the white-tailed poisonous snake he had been searching for for five years. He immediately contacted the Chengdu Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. In December, he took the little snake to find the Chinese reptile expert Zhao Ermi. After research and comparison, he determined that this was a new species.
1990 China's "Sichuan Animals" first issue, Professor Zhao Ermi and Chen Yuanhui jointly signed it to the world to announce to the world that a new snake species was discovered in Mangshan, China, named Mangshan soldering iron head.
Release
In order to allow the little snake to continue to grow and reproduce offspring in the wild, three days later, on August 20, 2003, Chen Yuanhui and other researchers returned to Qinglongju to prepare for release. In order to be able to photograph the whole process of releasing the snake, Chen Yuanhui did not throw the snake away as usual, but slowly placed it in the grass. However, an accident happened
Chen Yuanhui: "I just put it down and loosened my hand. It turned around and bit my left hand, bit my middle finger. I loosened my hand, and it hung on my hand."
Even Chen Yuanhui himself did not expect an accident.When he was about to treat the wound immediately, he found that the bite marks on his left middle finger were very clear. For researchers, fresh bite marks were important research materials, and this was just a little snake about one year old. Chen Yuanhui decided not to treat the wound first, but to take a photo of the wound.
Chen Yuanhui obviously underestimated the venom of the snake. When Chen Yuanhui began to treat the wound, he felt more and more exhausted.
Soon after, Chen Yuanhui lay down on the ground. Her daughter who accompanied her had learned to treat snake venom with Chen Yuanhui. She began first aid under the guidance of her father. At this time, the colleague's idea of sending him to the hospital was also rejected by Chen Yuanhui, who was about to fall into a coma.
Chen Yuanhui was quickly taken down the mountain and sent home. His daughter looked for herbs based on his previous prescriptions and applied medicine to him for treatment. Chen Yuanhui fell asleep at home for two days and two nights.
On the third day, Chen Yuanhui finally woke up, but the upper part of his bitten left middle finger was already festered, so he had no choice but to cut it off and become a mosaic of the iron-headed snake left for him forever. However, this accident did not make Chen Yuanhui give up his research on Mangshan iron-headed snake, but instead was very proud of the precious information he took this time.
meaning
Guangdong Province experts confirmed on the 15th that a snake caught by three forest rangers in Shaoguan last Thursday was a rare species Mangshan soldering iron head. Experts said that if three people were indeed discovered in the Shaoguan mountainous area, it was the first time that Mangshan soldering iron head was discovered outside of Hunan Province, China, and its significance can be compared with the discovery of wild South China tigers.
[Species Naming]:
This snake was discovered by Chen Yuanhui in 1989 and named by Academician Zhao Ermi in 1990. Although the original spearhead genus was established at that time, it was still classified as Trimeresurus, named Trimeresurus mangshanensis, and the Chinese name was Mangshan soldering iron head. In 1993, some people named it Ermia mangshanensis, but it was found that Ermia genus Ermia has been used as the genus name of a certain orthoptera insect. This scientific name violates the international animal and plant naming regulations, so it is an invalid name. In 2004, Gumprecht and others changed the genus name to Zhaoermia, and expressed their respect to Academician Zhao Ermi with this name, and changed the scientific name to Zhaoermia mangshanensis. In 2009, Orlov and others classified it as the original spearhead viper, and then they had a scientific name, which changed the Chinese name to the original spearhead viper in Mangshan.
Chinese name originated from
Mangshan soldering iron head is the main reason why it gets its name because of its obviously triangle-shaped head, shaped like a piece of soldering iron.
[Popular Distribution]:
Soldering iron-headed snake is a giant venomous snake species unique to China. It was only in 1990 that it was discovered by the academic community and was named and recorded scientifically. As of 2013, it is only known that most of them are located in the Mangshan Forest Area on the border of Hunan, Guangdong and Hubei in China. They were discovered many years ago in Lichuan City, Enshi, Hubei. The locals call it "the iron head". In addition, it has also been found in Guangdong. According to the investigation report of the State Forestry Administration, Mangshan iron-headed snake is one of 11 animals in my country that are facing extinction due to its small population and narrow distribution. It is said that it is more endangered than giant pandas and urgently needs rescue protection. Mangshan iron-headed snake is unique to Mangshan in the world, with a distribution of only about 100 square kilometers. It is the largest snake species known as venomous snakes. The living body of Mangshan iron-headed snake that has been found is 8.5 kg.
[Popular Status]:
With the popularity of Mangshan iron-headed snake, the value of this snake has also increased. By 1996, after the snake was included in the red list of IUCN (World Conservation Alliance) by the International Protection Organization, the black market price of the snake had risen to more than 1 million. The iron-headed snake only grows in Mangshan, Chenzhou, and is named because the snake head resembles a triangular soldering iron. Chen Yuanhui said that the iron-headed snake is called the "giant panda" of the snake kingdom. There are only 300 to 500 in the world and urgently need rescue protection. After the iron-headed snake was included in the red list of IUCN ( World Union for Conservation of Nature ) by the International Protection Organization in 1996, the black market price reached millions of yuan. The iron-headed snake in Mangshan has not been included in the list of key protected wild animals in China, and there is no relevant legal basis to protect it. Therefore, there have been many people who have been hunting and selling snakes in Mangshan in the past two years.
Since it was confirmed as a "more endangered wild species than giant pandas", the price of each Mangshan iron-headed snake was once speculated to more than 1 million yuan. Since the snake has not been included in the national key protected wild animals in the legal sense, it was a rampant hunt in the 1990s, and a large number of snake species were out of the way. Due to the gap in the legal system and the temptation of high prices, snake catching has reached a crazy level again, and some people have actually reached the museum. For this reason, many domestic experts are worried that if they are not protected immediately, the species will disappear from the earth.
There are two iron-headed snakes originally exhibited in Mangshan Ecological Museum. The stolen iron-headed snake is an adult snake weighing 2.5 kilograms. The snake had just shed its skin and its whole body showed a bright green green color.
Mangshan iron-headed snake has not been included in the national key protected wildlife catalog in the legal sense, so it brings difficulties to local law enforcement and provides convenience for smuggling. He called on people to resist the acquisition of Mangshan iron-headed snakes. Relevant state units should include Mangshan iron-headed snakes in the key protection catalog as soon as possible and provide support in terms of protection and research funds.
This snake is gradually becoming rare and endangered. It is a national super-protected animal.
[Conservation Level]:
1994, the National Biodiversity Conservation Action Plan listed Mangshan iron-headed snake as "the endangered species with priority protection at the international level." In 2004, the State Forestry Administration released the results of a national wildlife survey, showing that the number of Mangshan iron-headed snakes was only about 500. On the list of "11 wild animals in China that are more endangered than giant pandas and urgently needing rescue and protection" released by the State Forestry Administration that year, Mangshan iron-headed snake ranked 10th. People have since called it "Panda among snakes". [2] It was listed as a national first-class protected wildlife in 2021.
[Close to Species]:
Original Spearhead Viper
In Viper family, the closest one to Mangshan iron-headed snake is the original Spearhead Viper, also known as Iron-headed , a highly venomous snake. Its head is also obviously triangular, like a soldering iron, but its model is much smaller than the Mangshan soldering iron head. Its figure is also much slimmer, which is obviously not on the same level as the Mangshan soldering iron head. But it is not an easy target to mess with. Once threatened, it will act as an offensive posture and its tail will swing like a rattlesnake. Although it cannot make a sound, it is enough to shock the opponent. Another function is to lure the enemy. The tail tip of the snake has a special function in nature. It swings the tail tip when it is preying, and its tail tip is like a small insect twisting. At this time, it will attract some small birds and frogs to come, so that it can hunt the food it wants at the closest distance. If it bites, the poison juice secreted in its poisonous glands will also bring life danger to people.
[Legend]:
In Mangshan, there is an ancient and mysterious mountain nation, the Yao people. In the songs passed down from ancestors, the Yao people in Mangshan are direct descendants of Fuxi Nuwa . Fuxi and Nuwa are gods with human face and snake body. The Yao people inherited part of their human nature, and their snake nature was inherited by a snake called "Little Green Dragon". According to legend, this snake is huge in shape and has a white tail. The Yao people felt that they and the "Little Qinglong" were brothers born to the same mother and were spiritual. They regarded it as a totem. The Yao people lived in the deep mountains and streams for generations. Although they had never met their brothers, the Yao people firmly believed that their brothers lived with them in this vast mountain.
Mangshan iron-headed snake cannot be regarded as one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. Mangshan iron-headed snake is a giant poisonous snake that was only discovered by the academic community in 1990 and was named and recorded scientifically. Mangshan iron-headed snake is commonly known as "Little Green Dragon" among the people. It is the 50th poisonous snake in China. It is a unique rare species and is not listed in the ten most poisonous snakes in the world.
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