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Naja vs Ophiophagus
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by Nodj on April 6, 2006
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Why the King Cobra(ophiophagus hannah)is different of others cobras(naja), the reason of my question is that King Cobra(ophiophagus) is a different gene of others cobras(naja) and I want to know why?
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RE: Naja vs Ophiophagus
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by BGF on April 6, 2006
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Because genetically they are totally unrelated. There is a whole suite of snakes inbetween them. To call them a cobra is actually a misnomer. Wolfgang no doubt can go into this in more detail.
Cheers
B
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RE: Naja vs Ophiophagus
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by toddg on April 7, 2006
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I believe there are some visual differences as well, for instance, the head scales are different between ophiophagus and naja. Kings have those massive scutes on top of the head where as naja’s don’t.
If you’ll notice, rinkals are also classified by themselves, in part because they are ovoviviparous and they have keeled scales.
Also, Golds tree cobra, supposedly the only elapid with a loreal scale, gets it’s own classification.
I’m sure I read all this stuff somewhere however, things may have changed so I could be wrong.
toddg
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RE: Naja vs Ophiophagus
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by earthguy on April 7, 2006
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We have a tendancy, and have since Linneaus, to lump organisms together that look alike. To be sure, this was the best system available for a long time. If it has a hood, then it must be a cobra! Problems arise, though, when convergent evolution and life cycles enter the picture. Convergent evolution is when different organisms develop similar traits to survive similar environments- viz.different snakes expand their "necks" to intimidate potential predators and evolve hoods (oversimplification, I know. But class is about to start). Life cycles are very interesting things. Back when Bachman and Audobon were describing birds in the new world they very often described the same species as different species due to seasonal plumage and sexual dimorphism. Enter DNA: now we can actually quantify relationships (WW is one of the best here). If you want to see something that will really challenge your preconceptions of phylogeny - check out the lates research on salamanders. There are salamanders that are different species yet are phentypically similar and there are species that are absolutely polymorphic. Basically, the only way to reliably differentiate between some species is DNA analysis.
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