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King Cobra Taxonomy
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by HerpFever46 on March 29, 2005
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Hey guys, I had always beleived that the King Cobra was a monotypic snake, being the only species in the genus Ophiophagus. The only other monotypic cobra I think is the Rinkhal's Spitting Cobra (Haemachatus haemachatus). Anyway, when I visited Dr. Brian Grieg Fry's website he mentioned that there was more than one species of King Cobra, which confused me. What do you guys have to say to that? Thanks, Bryan
P.S. If you want to check out this comment on the website go to venomdoc.com and click on "Elapid" in the Research section.
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RE: King Cobra Taxonomy
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by Cro on March 29, 2005
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Considering the large range of this snake, and the large amount of variation, it would not be suprising that someone would try to create new sub-species. JohnZ
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RE: King Cobra Taxonomy
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by LarryDFishel on March 29, 2005
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Semantics I guess... "Officially" they are currently (last I heard) classified as one species. "They" have been talking for a while about splitting them into several species. If they do, does that mean that they WERE one species and now they are several, or does it mean that they were always several species but that was not recognized? Probably depends on the context of the discussion.
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RE: King Cobra Taxonomy
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by CAISSACA on March 30, 2005
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>> "They" have been talking for a while about splitting them into several species. If they do, does that mean that they WERE one species and now they are several, or does it mean that they were always several species but that was not recognized? Probably depends on the context of the discussion.
Depends on what time scale ;-)
Evolutionarily speaking, they were one species and split into several, but over a timescale of a few million years.
On a human timescale, they are very probably several species, and always have been, but this fact has not been recognised. Part of the reason is that a king is so obviously recognisable that few people ever looked any further. Anyone in a collecting expedition would probably think along the lines of "Yup, that's obviously a king, tag it and catalogue it. Now that little grey thing with the black spot over there looks interesting, what is that? Let's take a closer look..."
There are studies of king cobras in progress at the moment, but don't expect anything to be published anytime soon.
Cheers,
WW
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