Jameson's mamba
| Jameson's mamba | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Subphylum: | Vertebrata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Order: | Squamata |
| Suborder: | Serpentes |
| Family: | Elapidae |
| Genus: | Dendroaspis |
| Species: | D. jamesoni |
| Binomial name | |
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Dendroaspis jamesoni (Traill, 1843) |
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| Range of Jameson's mamba | |
| Synonyms | |
Jameson's mamba (Dendroaspis jamesoni ) is a species of quick, highly arboreal and highly venomous snake of the family Elapidae. The species is endemic to Africa.
Jameson's mamba was first described in 1843 by Thomas Traill, a Scottish physician, zoologist and scholar of medical jurisprudence. In 1936, Arthur Loveridge described two subspecies, the nominotypical D. jamesoni jamesoni and D. jamesoni kaimosae; the latter is commonly referred to as eastern Jameson's mamba or the black-tailed Jameson's mamba.
The generic name, Dendroaspis, derives from Ancient Greek dendro (δένδρο), meaning "tree", and aspis (ασπίς), which is understood to mean "shield", but also denotes "cobra" or simply "snake", in particular "snake with hood (shield)". Via Latin aspis, it is the source of the English word "asp". In ancient texts, aspis or asp often referred to the Egyptian cobra (Naja haje), in reference to its shield-like hood. Thus, "Dendroaspis" literally means tree asp, reflecting the arboreal nature of most of the species within the genus. The genus was first described by the German ornithologist and herpetologist Hermann Schlegel in 1848. Slowinski et al. (1997) pointed out that the relationships of the African genus Dendroaspis are problematical. However, evidence suggests that Dendroaspis, Ophiophagus, Bungarus, and Hemibungarus form a solid non-coral snake Afro-Asiatic clade.
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