Recently, Hu Jiahao, a 17-year-old senior high school student in Linhai, Zhejiang, discovered a new reptile species - the Kuocang Ridge Snake (commonly known as the "Chopstick Snake") through nighttime field surveys. The relevant results were published in the international journal "Zoosystematics and Evolution" and won his first SCI.
This is the first new reptile species whose type origin is located in Zhejiang since the 20th century. After Hu Jiahao posted a screenshot of his paper on WeChat Moments, his experience of “hunting for snakes at midnight” attracted attention.
It is reported that in the summer vacation of 2025, Hu Jiahao, who was taking a break from schoolwork, officially started his scientific expedition trip to Kuocang Mountain.
He reached a breakthrough by "brushing the mountains" late at night for more than 40 consecutive nights, and then continued to trek hundreds of kilometers back and forth for more than two months to conduct surveys, and finally collected key specimens, filling the core specimen gap in the study of new species.
Molecular sequencing and morphological analysis of these specimens by universities and scientific research institutions confirmed that the new species was officially named Achalinus mirabilis, with a genetic difference of 9.5% to 10.9% in CO1 genes from closely related species.
It can be clearly distinguished from closely related species due to its obvious ridges on the outermost dorsal scales. Because of its body shape, which is as slender as chopsticks, netizens affectionately call it the "chopstick snake".
It is worth mentioning that SCI includes global high-quality natural science journals from the Institute of Scientific Information (ISI) and is an internationally recognized authoritative academic retrieval system.
