Slash, also known as Saul Hudson, is famous worldwide as the guitarist for Guns N' Roses. But music is only part of his story. He has also been fascinated by reptiles for most of his life and has long supported zoos, museums, and natural history.
Now that passion has earned him an unusual scientific honor. Researchers have named a newly identified snake species from New Guinea Lielaphis slashi, or Slash's groundsnake. "As a long time herpephile, I am extremely honored and humbled to have Lielaphis slashi from New Guinea named after me.
It is really exciting, I never would have imagined this moment would arrive," says Slash. For Sara Ruane, the Field Museum's Associate Curator of Herpetology and senior author of a paper in Zootaxa describing the species, the name also has a personal connection. "Guns N' Roses has been one of my favorite bands since I was in first grade, and by fifth grade, I had already told my teacher that I wanted to be a herpetologist -- a scientist who studies reptiles -- when I grew up," says Sara Ruane, the Field Museum's Associate Curator of Herpetology and senior author of a paper in Zootaxa describing the new species.
"So when I was twelve years old and got my copy of Reptiles Magazine in the mail and it had a picture of Slash holding his pet reticulated python on the cover, I thought, 'This guy is so cool.'" Years later, after Ruane became a scientist who sometimes has the opportunity to assign official names to newly recognized reptile species, she returned to that old magazine interview. "I reread his interview, and he talked about how much he loves museums and zoos and natural history, and about how when he was a kid, he'd go outside and look for snakes -- it was all stuff that I really related to, and it made me think that he'd be a great person to name a new species after," says Ruane. Her opportunity eventually came in the form of a reddish-brown snake measuring 28 inches long that had been collected in the forests of New Guinea.
New Guinea is the world's second-largest island, behind Greenland. Located just north of Australia, the island is divided between Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Its tropical forests support enormous biological diversity, much of which remains poorly documented by scientists.
During fieldwork one night in 2006, Chris Austin, a professor and curator of herpetology at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science, encountered a snake in New Guinea that he did not recognize. "These New Guinea groundsnakes are nocturnal, so the best way to find them is at night. They are typically found just after sunset at the base of large trees where they are looking for something to eat," says Austin, a co-author of the paper describing the new species.
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