Sri Lanka’s spectacled cobra (Naja naja) carries a two-million-year-old genetic mystery, and a new study finds that the island’s cobras form a genetically distinct lineage, reopening a taxonomic question raised by a Sri Lankan zoologist nearly nine decades ago.

The study also established that the spectacled cobra has evolved from an African ancestor that reached the region via the Middle East.

To read the full story visit https://news.mongabay.com/2026/10/a-study-unravels-the-genetic-mystery-of-a-cobra-divided-by-sea/

Image credit: Bhasuru Prabashwara