‘Long’-fingered creature found lurking on walking trail in Nepal. It’s a new species
As darkness seeped across the mountains of Nepal, a “long”-fingered creature with “green-grey” eyes emerged from its hiding place and climbed up a boulder. Its remote home and nocturnal lifestyle likely helped it go unnoticed.
But when scientists eventually found the speckled animal, it turned out to be a new species.
A team of researchers hiked into Manaslu Conservation Area in northern Nepal in 2023 to search for wildlife. They knew the country had “rich biodiversity” but remained largely undersurveyed because of its “challenging terrain and a sparse road network,” according to a study published March 3 in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa.
During a nighttime hike along a walking trail, researchers found several unfamiliar-looking lizards perched on rocks, the study said. They took a closer look at the animals and realized they’d discovered a new species: Cyrtodactylus karanshahi, or Karan’s bent-toed gecko.
Karan’s bent-toed geckos are considered “medium-sized,” reaching about 5.5 inches in length, researchers said. They have “slender” bodies with skin folds along their sides. Their “short” heads have “small” greenish eyes, while their limbs have “long” fingers and toes.
Photos show the brown, speckled coloring of the new species. Its body is dotted with black, white and cream spots. The pattern morphs into blotchy stripes on its tail.
Karan’s bent-toed geckos were found lurking at night on rocks and boulders along a trail between villages, the study said. The geckos seemed “abundant, with two or more geckos (on) most rocks.”
Researchers said they named the new species after Karan Bahadur Shah for his “remarkable” research contributions “in particular (on) the herpetofauna of his home country, Nepal, in a career spanning over 40 years. He also led the feasibility study of the area for the formal establishment of the Manaslu Conservation Area Project,” where the new species lives.
So far, the new species has only been found in the Manaslu Conservation Area in northern Nepal and near the border with Tibet, a disputed region controlled by China, the study said.
The new species was identified by its scale pattern, body shape, glands, coloring and other subtle physical features, the study said. DNA analysis found the new species had at least 11% genetic divergence from other related gecko species.
The research team included Santosh Bhattarai, Bivek Gautam, Bishal Prasad Neupane, Akshay Khandekar, Tejas Thackeray, Ishan Agarwal, Frank Tillack, Ashley Olson, Fiona Hogan and Wendy Wright.
The team also discovered two more new species: the Chitwan bent-toed gecko and the ACAP bent-toed gecko.
This story was originally published March 12, 2025 at 10:56 AM with the headline "‘Long’-fingered creature found lurking on walking trail in Nepal. It’s a new species."
