Salazar Slytherin – the parseltongue wizard who talks with snakes in J.K. Rowling’s fantasy Harry Potter is not just a mystical character name of the Potterverse anymore! Now, its found a place in India’s biodiversity as a newly discovered pit viper from Arunachal Pradesh has been named after this character. 

In a recent study, scientists from the Zoological Survey of India, Kolkata, have found a new species of earth-boring dung beetle in the Tawang district of Arunachal Pradesh during one of their field expeditions. Named after the district it was discovered in, Enoplotrupes tawangensis belongs to the family Geotrupidae.