A snake of green pit viper specie discovered in India was named after the character Salazar Slytherin from JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series where Slytherin had the ability to talk to snakes — a rare skill called Parselmouth.
According to a news reporpublished by Daily Mail on Wednesday, the green venomous snake has been named Trimeresurus Salazar after the Hogwarts house founder, but will be commonly known as Salazar’s pit viper.
The new serpent is the latest in a long line of ‘fantastic beasts’ named after characters or objects from the Harry Potter series.
There is a ‘sorting-hat’ spider and a crab called ‘Harryplax severus’.
Researchers from the National Centre for Biological Sciences and Bombay Natural History Society found the snake in Arunachal Pradesh — a state in India — and also revealed that the males of the Salazar pit viper species have an orange-reddish stripe running along their head and own more teeth than other pit vipers.
In the world-famous Harry Potter stories Salazar Slytherin was one of the four founders of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry — he founded the Slytherin house.
Moreover, in the second part of the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, a giant snake called the Basilisk terrorised Hogwarts students and was said to be owned by Slytherin.
