My love affair with cobras continue. The cobras are my all time favorite reptiles. I have always been fascinated with them from childhood. I am sure the stories my dad narrated to me as a child helped a lot. He used to talk about my granddad's encounters with the cobras over the years. It so happens that my granddad used to be a small game hunter and so I used to love his adventure stories.

So when I read about the new African species of spitting cobras, I was quite interested.

The newly anointed Ashe's spitting cobra, or large brown spitting cobra (Naja ashei), can reach lengths of more than 9 feet (274 centimeters) and is believed to deliver more venom with a single bite than any other cobra on the planet.

The aggressive reptile was previously identified as a brown-colored variant of the black-necked spitting cobra, though researchers had long suspected that it merited its own species. Now blood and tissue analysis have confirmed this theory to be true.

The snake dwells in the dry lowlands of north and east Kenya, as well as in Uganda and Ethiopia.

Of course, King Cobra is the longest of all venomous snakes with lengths up to 18.5 ft (5.7 m), but it is not part of the cobra family.

Read more at National Geographic. And more pictures here.

Update: A beautiful article on the large brown spitting cobra can be found at Saving Snakes blog at Wild Life Direct.