AS IF snakes were not scary enough already, a new poisonous species has been discovered that can change colour in order to camouflage itself.

The chameleon-like ability to change colour is well known among reptiles but has rarely been observed in snakes before now.

Scientists who discovered the snake, a member of the Enhydris genus composed of 22 species, named it the Kapuas mud snake after the wetland and swamp forest area around the Kapuas River where is was found in the Betung Kerihun National Park, an area in Kalimantan, the Indonesian part of the island of Borneo.

Mark Auliya, a reptile specialist hunting for specimens, said: “I put the reddish-brown snake in a dark bucket. When I retrieved it a few minutes later, it was almost entirely white.”

Dr Auliya, of the Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig in Germany and a consultant for World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), collected two of the 2ft (0.6m) snakes. Most of the species in the Enhydris genus have a very limited range, suggesting that the newly discovered species may not occur anywhere else except the Kapuas River drainage system.

Stuart Chapman, of the WWF, which is supporting conservation work in Borneo, said: “The discovery of the ‘chameleon’ snake exposes one of nature’s best-kept secrets deep in the heart of Borneo. Its ability to change colour has kept it hidden from science until now. I guess it just picked the wrong colour that day.”

Scientists believe that the Kapuas mud snake eats rats, mice and possibly fish.

Borneo’s wildlife is so rich that 361 new species of animals and plants have been discovered in the past decade, three every month. However, WWF gave a warning that the new species was already under threat as the forested area of Borneo has been reduced by 25 per cent since the mid-1980s.

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