Phylogenetic relationships and geographic range of five pit viper species across the Himalaya and Hindu Kush. Credit: Dr Daniel Jablonski The towering mountain systems of Asia are still among the least thoroughly studied biological regions on the continent. An international team of scientists has now revealed that one of their most secretive venomous snakes, long classified as a single species, actually represents a complex of five separate species, three of them previously unknown to science.