At 17, he spent 40 nights searching the mountains for a rare snake scientists needed

For 40 nights in the summer of 2025, 17-year-old Hu Jiahao searched the mountains of Zhejiang for a snake that biologists had been unable to identify from incomplete remains. He covered nearly 100 kilometers on round trips after finishing his studies.

The search began after biologists Zhou Jiajun and Chen Haojun, from Zhejiang’s Forest Resource Monitoring Center, found partial remains in 2024. The fragments did not reveal enough about the animal’s characteristics. Hu, a wildlife enthusiast, decided to continue the search on his own.

At first, he searched on rainy nights because snakes are often more active in such conditions. After repeated failures, he switched to clear nights. On August 17, 2025, while descending a mountain road in the Kuocang Mountains, he noticed a snake crossing the road. It was the animal the biologists had been seeking.

The adult female measured 332 millimeters and matched the characteristics of the traces found in 2024. Hu kept searching after that discovery and found four more specimens over the following two months: two alive and two killed by vehicles.

The specimens gave researchers the material needed to compare the snake’s physical features and genetics. The series included the holotype, the reference specimen used to describe a species, and four paratypes, including the original road-killed specimen. Scientists formally named the new species Achalinus mirabilis, informally known as the Kuocang Mountain odd-scaled snake. Hu’s repeated searches supplied the complete specimens needed to identify and describe it.