“This felt like being in an action movie,” Lehr informed The Washington Post.
In worry of being abducted or killed, the scientists said they reduced their journey and left on a helicopter — together with the snake they had actually found.
Lehr later on analyzed the snake and discovered it was an undiscovered types. He was puzzled about what to call it till June, when a trailer for the brand-new Indiana Jones motion picture advised him of his journeys to Peru.
Lehr, 54, believed it would be fitting to call the types after the star who plays Indiana Jones, a character understood for his snake fear, in the action motion picture series. On Tuesday, scientists revealed Tachymenoides harrisonfordi — a 16-inch snake called in honor of Harrison Ford — in the journal Salamandra.
“Harrison Ford is, for me, the only name that would work,” said Lehr, a biology teacher at Illinois Wesleyan University.
Ant and spider types have actually already been called after Ford, however a snake is maybe most ideal for his functions in the 5 Indiana Jones films.
“These scientists keep naming critters after me, but it’s always the ones that terrify children,” Ford, 81, said in a declaration. “I don’t understand. I spend my free time cross-stitching. I sing lullabies to my basil plants, so they won’t fear the night.”
“In all seriousness, this discovery is humbling.”
The scientists took a trip to Otishi National Park in the Vilcabamba range of mountains in May 2022 to search a meadow that had actually not been completely checked out. The park — which has a peak that’s 10,656 feet high — is available mostly by air, and Lehr said he and his coworkers paid to ride in a Peruvian militaries helicopter.
A week after their arrival, the scientists discovered a yellow, brown and black snake with copper eyes sunbathing in an overload. Lehr said it was among the only snakes he has actually discovered in a location of high elevation.
But the scientists quickly felt scared in an area that the U.S. State Department has actually ruled risky for tourists. Two days after finding the snake, the scientists said they heard unknown voices on their radio frequency while they spoke on walkie talkies and later on saw footprints around their encampment. One early morning, Lehr said he woke up to a buzzing sound and discovered a drone hovering above him.
About 2 weeks into the trip, Lehr and his coworkers chose to call it gives up. On the day of their departure, he slipped through mud as he ran towards a helicopter that ultimately dropped the group off at a military base prior to they flew back to the United States.
When scientists went back to their laboratory with the snake, they verified through hereditary analysis that it was a brand-new types. Lehr composed a term paper about the snake over the next year however had actually not decided on a name — till he saw a trailer for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.”
The trailer restored memories of viewing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” — the very first Indiana Jones motion picture — as a teen in a Frankfurt, Germany, theater around 1981. Jones’s journeys throughout the world searching for treasures and to beat Nazis motivated Lehr to one day check out the world for animals.
Last month, Lehr called Conservation International, a Virginia ecological not-for-profit group. Ford, the vice-chair of the organization’s board, said he was all right with the snake being called after him, Lehr said.
On Tuesday, Lehr commemorated the research study’s publication by viewing the brand-new Indiana Jones motion picture. He is among a couple of researchers to just recently call a types after a star.
“A species that is dedicated to such a famous actor creates public awareness,” Lehr said. “I want people to know that there are still new species that have to be discovered.”
