‘Like I had seen a ghost’: Rare snake rediscovered in Singapore after 64 years

SINGAPORE: It was minutes to midnight when two amateur photographers wandering near one of Singapore’s few remaining natural streams chanced across a slumbering snake they had never seen before.

Forest streams like Lorong Banir in northern Singapore are increasingly rare amid the city-state’s expansive urbanisation, and in recent years, the delicate habitat has drawn nature enthusiasts longing for a glimpse of the uncommon wildlife that thrive there.

Sometimes, the dream becomes reality. As it did in October for the young men and their friends when they logged Singapore’s first record of the Peters’ keelback snake (Hebius petersii) in 64 years.

Their rediscovery, believed to be the first time the species has been photographed alive, was published online on Nov 29 by the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum.

The roughly 50cm-long reddish-brown snake was adorned with black blotches.

It was unlike any other snake that third-year NUS student Trin Chantong had ever encountered, despite being designated as his family’s snake catcher while growing up in Thailand.

“My whole body was shaking that day,” said the 21-year-old, who started wildlife photography only in early 2024.

Meanwhile, fellow photographer Hamad Azam – who met Mr Chantong just six months ago – was initially sceptical.

The 22-year-old full-time national serviceman said: “I kind of killed Trin’s excitement, I said ‘let’s stay logical, it can’t be something impossible’.”

His caution turned into euphoria after a closer look, and others, including Wong Kwang Ik, who joined the duo later, confirmed that the snake was a keelback snake – a group of semi-aquatic snakes – that they did not recognise.

The mystery was unravelled after Wong chanced across a photograph of a Peters’ keelback carcass in a recent article detailing Singapore’s extinctions over the past two centuries.

The piece had cited the specimen as an example of the biodiversity that Singapore has lost over the years. Scientific research estimates that the island-state has lost 37 per cent of its species.

The 30-year-old operations officer said of the snake in the photo: “Ethanol had de-coloured the specimen, but what was still recognisable were the dots that lined the back of the neck running down the body, which resembled the features that I had seen.”

“At that moment, I felt like I had seen a ghost.”

The snake’s identity was concluded with certainty by ecological consultants Law Ing Sind, Law Ingg Thong and Shivaram Rasu, who compared the hobbyists’ photos with specimens in museums here and abroad.

For science, the photographs of the live snake are “extremely exciting” as they not only mark the rediscovery of the species from the geographic area where it can naturally be found, but also represent the first time the snake has been photographed alive, said Dr Alex Figueroa, who co-authored the latest checklist of Singapore’s amphibians and reptiles.

The record shows that species that have been thought to be lost from Singapore continue to exist, even after widespread deforestation of the island and the creation of reservoirs and canalisation of waterways, added the biologist.

Said Dr Figueroa: “The rediscovery and photographs help scientific research, because they show how rare a species can be, that it can go undetected for so long yet still persist in an area, even one that is quite disturbed.”

“Thus, extremely rare and suspected extinct species should also feature in the management plans of managers, as there’s always the possibility that they may be rediscovered.”

In Singapore, the Peters’ keelback was first collected more than 180 years ago during a United States expedition in 1842, and was misidentified as a different species then.

To date, only four specimens of the animal have been collected here, accounting for more than a quarter of the species’ 15 specimens, which were found in Peninsular Malaysia, Borneo and Sumatra.

Singapore’s last specimen was collected on Aug 6, 1960, at the former Royal Army Service Corps school in Sembawang, where Nee Soon Camp stands today, and close to where the October encounter occurred.

Little is known about the snake on an international level, despite having been assessed to be of the least concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature on its website.

The latest assessment, dated more than a decade ago, attributed its status to extensive swathes of its forest habitat still present where the snake was previously found in South-east Asia. However, there were no estimates for the size of this species’ population.

The sighting joins dozens of flora and fauna discovered and rediscovered over the past two decades in the vicinity of Nee Soon Swamp Forest, Singapore’s last freshwater swamp forest to survive the city-state’s deforestation.

Although a sliver of Singapore’s original forest, of which more than 90 per cent has been felled, the protected area is home to wildlife like the Singapore firefly, a luminous insect smaller than a pea, and the Selangor mud snake, which was rediscovered after 106 years.

The youth hope that their rediscovery could help put less recognised forests and streams on the road map of conservation.

Said Wong: “Land is the most scarce resource that Singapore has. But as we think of how we use our land, we cannot be blind to the impact this has on biodiversity and on our ecosystems as a whole.

“Protecting a garden like the Gardens by the Bay is not the same as conserving a mature and high-quality forest.” – The Straits Times/ANN