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While snakes often evoke fear, they play crucial roles in ecosystems. Recent fieldwork has uncovered two new species of the Boaedon genus—African House snakes—underscoring that even familiar groups harbor undiscovered diversity.
In a 2025 Zootaxa article, Two new species of Boaedon from Ethiopia and Somalia, with a review of the species of East Africa, herpetologists Jakob Hallermann and Oliver Hawlitschek described Boaedon broadleyi. The species is reddish‑olive‑brown or light brown, marked by two short white stripes on each side of its sub‑triangular head and a relatively high average of mid‑dorsal scale counts. The holotype, measured at 1,196 mm (nearly 4 ft), was collected in Ethiopia’s Oromia region in the late 1980s by Dr. Peter Angenstein. It remained in captivity under Ralf Hörold’s care until 2006, when it was donated to the Zoological Museum Hamburg, drawing the authors’ attention.
In the same paper, the team identified a second species, Boaedon subniger. The juvenile specimen—222 mm (8.74 in) long, blackish‑brown dorsally with a white ventral side—was found in Somalia’s Sanaag region in 2017 by Tomáš Mazuch and donated to the Hamburg museum in 2024. Unlike B. broadleyi, B. subniger prefers arid and semi‑arid habitats and is restricted to northern Somalia.
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Although morphologically distinct and occupying different ecological niches, both species contribute similarly to their ecosystems as predators of small mammals and prey for larger carnivores, reinforcing the ecological significance of the Boaedon genus.
