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I kept thinking that a boa constrictor (or some other snake) CANNOT SWALLOW a person for purely physiological reasons. All films about this are fiction and horror films. But what does it turn out to be? Here's yesterday's news.
In Russia, a drunk can freeze, but it turned out that in hot India it is also dangerous to get completely drunk. A man lying in the cold on the street near a store in the Indian state of Kerala was devoured by a huge man-eating python.
A snake that swallowed a man. Photo: India, Kerala state.
The incident happened in the Indian state of Kerala, which, like Goa, attracts a large number of tourists.
In India, a careless man decided to have a pleasant evening, but did not bring any alcohol home and drank the purchased drinks right next to a liquor store. The drunkard settled down there for the night.
And in the morning, local residents found a bloated snake on the threshold of a shop. It turned out that the python was crawling past the liquor store and saw the “food”. He strangled the man and then swallowed his victim. After such a hearty “lunch,” the reptile was unable to crawl away and lay down at the scene of the emergency.
The bloated snake was subsequently discovered by local residents, LOTD reports.
This example can serve as an edification to numerous tourists who go to India on vacation and often forget about moderation in relation to alcohol and other relaxing substances.
Here's a case like this:
A huge python, according to the children's stories, suddenly grabbed their friend when they were collecting fallen mangoes in the garden. The snake quickly wrapped itself around the child, tightly squeezing his arms and legs. The boy was so scared that he didn’t even scream or cry.
“The python squeezed him more and more until the boy closed his eyes and threw his head back,” said 11-year-old Cave, an eyewitness to the tragedy. - I realized that he was dead or unconscious. Then the snake opened its mouth wide and began to swallow him all at once, starting with the head.” For three hours, the children silently watched what was happening, afraid to move or call for help.
Later, police and snake experts found no traces of the tragedy - the child and his clothes disappeared along with the snake. On the rumpled grass there was only a trail leading to the spring. Herpentologists explained that the African python needed water to better digest its prey.
According to experts, this is the first case of cannibalism for this species of snake. Python apparently woke up after hibernation and was very hungry.
The reptile, swollen with a human body, was found nearby in the jungle; it could not crawl far. The snake was killed and immediately cut up, but the boy could not be saved - he died of suffocation.
Another case:
It turns out that the plot of the film “Anaconda” has a real basis and in our sinful world there are giant reptiles that can swallow a person whole.
Typically, snakes prefer to attack smaller creatures that they can easily swallow, but despite this, there are many documented cases of these reptiles swallowing livestock, dogs and even baby hippos.
Unfortunately, the diet of these predators is not limited to such a meager set of dishes, and creeping reptiles are not averse to tasting human flesh if possible. It’s hard to believe, but there really are giant giants on Earth for whom humans are just prey.
Four friends: Jose Ronaldo. Fernando Contaro, Miguel Orvaro and Sebastian Forte went to Mato Grosso, Brazil for camping and fishing. The fishing went well, and the alcohol flowed freely. Returning from the river, the friends noticed the absence of the fourth member of their fun company– dentist Jose Ronaldo. The tipsy fishermen looked for their drinking buddy before dark, but Jose seemed to have disappeared into the ground.
The next day, in a cheerful and high spirits, they went in search, hoping to find their friend lying drunk in some ditch. Towards evening they discovered his torn clothes.
“At first we decided that it was a robbery: the ground around was dug up, as if someone had been fighting on it,” says one of the fishermen, Fernando Contaro. “My heart was relieved, because if he was attacked by a person, and not a wild animal, then he could survive!”
After examining the scene of the struggle, they discovered a deep footprint in the ground leading into the forest. Experienced Hunter Sebastian Forte immediately said that a snake had left him... a very large snake, at least 10 meters long. The sun was already setting and the men decided to return to camp.
The next morning the men followed the snake's trail. What they discovered at the end of their journey shocked them: lying in front of them was a giant anaconda with an incredibly bloated body. Miguel pressed the python's head to the ground with a stick, and Fernando shot the reptile twice in the head with a revolver. The anaconda was towed to the camp, where they cut open its stomach and removed the dentist’s body, which had already begun to digest.
If a snake swallows a person, which happens relatively rarely, then it is certainly only for the purpose of “eating a little.” Here we could quote lengthy instructions recently published on the Internet on what to do if you are swallowed by a python or anaconda. The basic idea is that you need to let the snake swallow more of its legs, and then, with a sharp movement of a sharp knife, cut its head from the side from the inside. Where to get a sharp knife and what to do if you start to be swallowed from the head - this instruction does not tell you.
The only difficulty when swallowing a person should be caused by the shoulders. An adult, broad-shouldered man can hardly be swallowed...
The snake's jaw can, of course, move apart, but only to a certain limit. Only possible way- if the snake manages to swallow a person lying on its side (or it itself turns its head in such a way so that the victim enters it sideways).
So an anaconda may well swallow a child, a woman, a small, narrow-shouldered man...
Case three. Why shouldn't snakes eat hippos?
The answer is simple, hippos have too thick skin that more than one snake simply cannot digest.
(It's an unpleasant sight, think twice before watching)
Video: a stupid python that ate a baby hippopotamus, crawled with this carcass for a week, became terribly hungry and was forced to vomit this delicacy out of itself.
And now just some interesting information about snakes on this topic.
Bernard Grzimek.
From the book “Animals are my life.”
Can a snake swallow a person?
“There is no doubt that the ancients meant by their dragons our modern giant snakes. The amazing size of these animals, their considerable strength and the general fear of snakes in general make the exaggerations of which the ancients were guilty very clear.<…>Over time, human imagination has endowed dragons even richer and from incomprehensible fairy tales oriental people images gradually grew, for which a reasonable person searched in vain for originals, because information about the giant snakes themselves was almost lost. The more stubbornly uneducated people stuck to the favorite description of a large dragon or a gorynych serpent, spewed onto the earth for the destruction of the whole world "(A. E. Bram)
A giant twenty-meter or even thirty-meter snake, hiding on a branch, lies in wait for its prey. From a blow to the crown of her head, hard as a stone, a man taken by surprise falls almost unconscious to the ground, and the snake, with a lightning-fast throw, rushes at him and wraps him in its coils, breaking all his bones in an iron embrace. This happens in cases where brave liberators who cut the snake into pieces with knives do not arrive in time to help...
Descriptions of such heartbreaking scenes can be found in many adventure novels and even in other reports of expeditions to the unexplored tropics.
Do giant snakes really attack humans? Are they capable of swallowing us? There are hardly any other animals that are fantasized about as much as pythons, anacondas or boa constrictors. And therefore, it is precisely with regard to these animals that even a specialist finds it very difficult in each individual case to decide what is true and what is fiction.
This starts with determining the length. Even serious travelers have claimed that anacondas 30 or even 40 meters long are found in the Amazon forests. But they, as a rule, kept silent about whether they measured these snakes themselves or know this from eyewitness accounts.
Anaconda is the same boa constrictor, only South American. It is she who is considered the largest and strongest among all the giant snakes in the world. Another South American snake, also no less famous and also a boa constrictor (Constrictor), reaches a length of “only” five to six meters.
It must be said that measuring a snake is not so easy. It is most convenient to do this, of course, when it stretches to its full length. But for big snake such a pose is completely unnatural; some of them are simply not able to accept it - they need to bend at least the very end of their tail to the side in order to have support. Such a strong animal will not voluntarily allow itself to be straightened for measurement. In a dead snake, the body usually becomes so ossified that it is even more difficult to measure. If you judge the length of snakes by their skins that go on sale, then it is very easy to fall into a mistake: after all, this skin is sold by the meter, and therefore, while it is fresh, it can be stretched in length by 20 percent, and some say even by all 50. Snake hunters often use this.
It is interesting that live snakes are also sold by the meter. Snake traders charge zoos for small and medium-sized pythons from 80 pfennig to one mark for every centimeter. The New York Zoological Society announced many years ago that it would pay 20 thousand marks to anyone who brought a live anaconda over ten meters long; however, no one has yet been able to earn this tempting amount.
And yet it is quite possible that such giants exist or existed until very recently. The weight of such an animal should be quite impressive; Thus, the Asian reticulated python measures 8.8 meters and weighs 115 kilograms. It’s no wonder that such a colossus, living in the thicket of a virgin forest, is not so easy to defeat without a whole horde of helpers. And then you still need to be able to deliver it unharmed to the airfield or port.
The record length of the hieroglyphic python (Python sebae), widespread in Africa, is 9.8 meters. The Indian or tiger python (Python molurus) reaches 6.6 meters, the East Asian reticulated python (Python reticulatus) - either 8.4 meters or 10 meters, depending on which source you believe. A little smaller than the amethyst python.
So, in fact, we have already listed all six giants of the snake world: four oviparous pythons - natives of the Old World and two viviparous boas - of the New. Among the 2,500 species of snakes that inhabit the globe, there are a number of other species of boas and pythons, but they are much smaller.
Giant snakes are not poisonous. Unlike the fat giants of the snake kingdom Poisonous snakes(For example, African mamba, sometimes reaching four meters, and even longer - King Cobra) thinner and slimmer.
It takes a snake a lot of time to reach its enormous size. The eight-meter reticulated python living at the Pittsburgh Zoo grew by only 25 centimeters in a year. The older a snake gets, the slower it grows.
By appearance It is completely impossible to determine whether a snake is a female or a male. A pair of hieroglyphic pythons, which arrived at the New York Zoo at the age of one, grew at the same rate for the first six to seven years, but then the female began to noticeably lag in growth. The fact is that during this time she began to fast every year for six months: during the maturation of the eggs and when she warmed them, curled up around them.
We don’t know to what age giant snakes can live in the wild. No one has ever ringed them in their habitats, as has been done for decades, for example, with migratory birds. We can judge their age only from data obtained from zoos. The anaconda lived the longest at the Washington Zoo - 28 years (from 1899 to 1927). One of the boas lived in England at the Bristol Zoo for 23 years and 3 months, and the hieroglyphic python reached the age of eighteen there. A tiger python at the San Diego Zoo (California) lived to be 22 years and 9 months, and two East Asian reticulated pythons - one in London and the other in Paris - died at the age of 21.
The giants of the snake kingdom are the only large animals on Earth that do not have a voice, like, in fact, all other snakes. At best they can hiss. Snakes are not only mute, but also deaf. They do not perceive sound vibrations in the air - they do not have ears for this, like other animals. But they perfectly perceive any, even the most insignificant, shaking of the soil or litter on which they rest.
In addition, these deaf-mute giants also have poor vision. Their eyes are devoid of movable eyelids, and the transparent leathery film that protects the eye during each molt is separated along with all the skin and removed, like glass from a watch. The snake eye lacks the muscles of the iris, therefore the pupil cannot contract in bright light and dilate in dim light. The snake barely reacts to changes in the lighting of the eyes: the lens in it cannot bend, like ours, which deprives snakes of the opportunity to carefully examine objects located at close or far distances at will. To look at anything, the snake has to move its entire head first and then back. Perhaps all these are very useful properties (necessary, for example, for swimming and especially for looking at various items under water), but, by God, much more advanced eyes are found in the animal kingdom.
Since the python, like other snakes, does not close its eyes during sleep, it is always very difficult to determine whether it is sleeping or awake. Some snake researchers argue that a sleeping snake faces downwards, meaning its pupil is at the bottom edge of the eye; others dispute this claim.
The immobility of snake eyes gave rise to the widely repeated fairy tale that snakes supposedly hypnotize, as if paralyzing their prey with their gaze. Frogs, lizards or small rodents do sometimes sit completely motionless in the presence of a giant boa constrictor, but this is explained by different reasons: sometimes they simply do not notice the danger, and sometimes they become numb with fear; such freezing brings them a certain benefit, since the snake does not distinguish a motionless victim. After all, it is only when the frog runs away that the snake overtakes it.
How, after all, do these deaf-mute and, moreover, short-sighted giants find food for themselves? It turns out that they have developed sensory organs that we do not possess. For example, they unmistakably sense heat from a long distance. The snake senses a human hand already at a distance of thirty centimeters. Therefore, it is quite easy for silently crawling snakes to find even those warm-blooded animals that are carefully hidden in shelters. So that their own breathing does not interfere with their breathing, some of them (for example, pythons) have nostrils facing upward and backward.
But the sense of smell is most developed in snakes. It is quite surprising that the organ of smell is located in their mouth, on the palate, and the necessary information is delivered to it by the tongue, which extracts various small particles from the air. Thus, snakes do not need daylight; they can crawl in the tracks of their prey with equal success both day and night.
Once, not far from the Serengeti, my son Michael and I came across a huge hieroglyphic python, reaching three to four meters in length. We decided to take him with us. By the way, giant snakes, if they are not holding on to a tree or tangled in bushes, are not that difficult to catch. In an hour they can travel no more than one and a half kilometers - if they suddenly have the desire to crawl for an hour. Giant snakes move completely differently than their small relatives. They move forward, wriggling with their whole body, while in a giant snake the abdominal scales are used for this purpose. The scales are set in motion by muscles extending from the ribs (the ribs themselves remain motionless), causing it to move forward and backward like the small scoops of an excavator.
At that time we did not yet have much experience in handling snakes and therefore at first we showed extreme caution when guiding the python with spears. But in the end, we still decided to grab the snake by the tail, and it didn’t even try to attack us. We managed to stuff her into a bag, which we tied and put under a cot in our tent for the night. Unfortunately, the next morning the bag was empty. Huge snake Still managed to free myself. However, from the trail she left, it was easy to find out where she crawled. This trail was straight, distinct and wide, as if someone had rolled a car tire.
Not a single snake, including poisonous ones, is able to catch up with a running person. But giant snakes can swim well, much better than other land animals. As for the anaconda, it can be classified as an aquatic rather than a terrestrial animal.
Snakes and the sea don't care. Thus, one boa constrictor (Constriktor) was carried by the current 320 kilometers from the South American coast and washed up on the island of St. Vincent, where he arrived in good spirits.
When the Krakatoa volcano erupted in 1888, all life on the island of the same name was destroyed. Biologists observed how, over the subsequent years and decades, various lichens, plants and animals gradually reappeared here. So, the first reptiles to appear there were rock pythons, which by 1908 again took possession of the island.
The giant snakes have not yet completely turned into round ropes, as happened with other representatives of the snake tribe. Boas and pythons, like us, still have a pair of lungs, while in most other snakes the left lung has disappeared, and the right has greatly elongated and expanded noticeably. Giant snakes have small remains of pelvic and hip bones. But only two pitiful claws remained from the outside of the hind legs - to the right and to the left of the anus.
How do such slow giants manage to catch their prey? It should be said from the very beginning that the statement that they knock a person or any animal unconscious with a blow to their head is absolutely false. The heads of these giant monsters are not particularly hard, and in any case softer than ours. The snake itself would not be too pleased to use it for boxing. In addition, the attack of a giant snake is by no means as lightning fast as it is imagined. The force with which a snake weighing 125 kilograms attacks a victim is no greater than the force with which a dog weighing 20 kilograms attacks. Of course, some frail, unathletic European might fall from such a push. But a more or less dexterous man is quite capable of handling a four-meter boa constrictor alone, at least if he manages to stay on his feet; he can pull down the snake coils entwined around him with a few energetic jerks.
For a snake, it is much more important not to hit its head, but to grab the victim with its teeth. To do this, she opens her mouth to the limit. U reticulated python in the mouth there are a hundred back-curved teeth arranged in six rows. Therefore, if he managed to grab at least a finger, it is not so easy to pull it back. To do this, you need to try to unclench the snake’s jaws and first stick your hand even further into the mouth, and then pull it out.
Only when the snake has firmly grabbed the victim with its teeth does it begin to wrap its coils around it. Therefore, those who have to deal with giant snakes should always remember that they need to be grabbed only by the “scruff” - behind the head, so that they cannot bite.
Please take a closer look at the film footage or photographs depicting the “struggle” of a man with a giant snake, which allegedly strangles its victim. You will almost certainly notice that the “victim” has grabbed the snake by the throat. In such cases, the person himself wraps the snake around himself and then plays out the whole scene of a frantic struggle.
But even if the snake managed to grab its victim with its teeth and wrap it in several rings, this does not mean that it can “crush all its bones.” Giant snakes, even if they weigh more than a hundred kilograms, do not at all have the remarkable strength that is attributed to them. After all, the larger and heavier the animal, the less strength it has per kilogram of body weight. Thus, a louse, taking into account its weight, is 10 thousand times stronger than an elephant. And smaller snakes can squeeze and strangle a suitable victim much more strongly than giant snakes can squeeze their own.
Giant snakes kill not by crushing bones, but by strangulation. They squeeze the chest of their victim so much that she is unable to breathe air into her lungs. It is possible that prolonged compression may paralyze the heart. Snake rings, coiled around the victim's torso, act more like a rubber gut or rubber bandage than a strong<анат. Раздавить таким способом твердый костяк абсолютно невозможно. Поэтому когда в некоторых сообщениях о нападении змей фигурируют раздавленные человеческие черепа, то заранее можно твердо сказать, что это досужий вымысел. Человеческий череп достаточно твердый орешек, и мягкими, эластичными предметами его не расколешь!
My colleague Dr. Gustav Lederer, who directed our exotarium for forty years, carefully examined three pigs, three rabbits and three rats that had been killed but not yet swallowed by giant snakes. No broken bones were found in the victims. But in the already swallowed prey there were broken bones.
Giant snakes are kept in many zoos around the world and generally do not show any aggression as long as they are left alone. They are even quite easy to tame. Pythons living in the wild, when they are attacked or want to be grabbed, defend themselves only by trying to bite, and almost never try to throw their rings at the enemy; they do this only with prey that they are going to swallow.
In zoos, there are sometimes circumstances in which force must be used against a snake (for example, when moving a newly arrived resident into a terrarium or when veterinary intervention is necessary). To hold the snake, people are placed in this way: for every linear meter of the snake there is one person who must hold his part tightly, under no circumstances letting go of it.
I've been asking everywhere about any case where a snake in a zoo killed someone, but until now I had never heard of it. True, I was told that in a Russian animal sales company several decades ago, a seven- or eight-meter reticulated python wrapped itself around the senior servant Siegfried and “broke several of his ribs.”
One former dancer, who once performed dances with snakes, told the servants of our Frankfurt Zoo that one of the snakes once squeezed her so hard that she broke two ribs. But in order for a slender girl to break two ribs, no supernatural forces are required. For example, one day one of my sons, in a fit, hugged his bride so tenderly that something crunched inside her. It turned out that he broke her rib...
Although giant boas, as already mentioned, can rarely be tamed, nevertheless, the snakes with which dancers perform in various variety shows and circuses do not necessarily have to be tame. In order to wrap snakes around your shoulders and waist during a dance without any risk, it is enough to cool them down before the performance, then you can do almost anything with them. These cold-blooded animals become active only after they have warmed up thoroughly.
Of course, dragging snakes around on tour, especially in winter, or keeping them in poorly heated stage restrooms or hotel rooms does not do them any good.
They do not survive such a life for long and die. Therefore, dancers have to frequently renew their supply of pythons.
It is not true that giant snakes have the habit of hanging from a tree by holding the end of their tail to a branch and thus catching their prey. The statement that they pre-wet the dead animal with their saliva to facilitate swallowing is also incorrect. This misconception is based on the fact that snakes are often forced to regurgitate swallowed prey. This happens for various reasons: either the prey turns out to be prohibitively large, or when swallowed it takes an awkward position, or it has horns that prevent it from moving along the esophagus, and sometimes someone simply scared the snake, and this prevented it from calmly coping with the prey. Of course, a burped animal is abundantly moistened with saliva, which led people who accidentally saw it to misinterpret it.
Even very large and heavy snakes are able to crawl into relatively small loopholes, narrow windows or cracks in a fence. In this way, they usually sneak into chicken coops, pigsties or barns where goats are kept. And so, when they, having swallowed their victim whole, try to crawl back into the same hole from which they came, a huge thickening on the body does not allow them to get out, and they find themselves trapped. Here, it would seem, use your ability to regurgitate swallowed prey to free yourself from captivity! But snakes, as it turned out, “don’t have enough intelligence” for this.
Similar cases have been described quite often.
If you didn’t already know, the python is the largest snake on Earth, which, unlike its fellows, does not kill its prey with venom. This large reptile, related to boa constrictors and anacondas, is part of the family of pseudopods and today 41 species of pythons are found in nature: hieroglyphic, royal, tiger, Indian, yellow, reticulated.
The python is second only to the anaconda in weight; the length of these reptiles can reach more than 10 meters, but most often pythons with a length of 4 to 8 m are found. The weight of a seven-meter python is about 70 kg. The python is an aggressive and large snake that attacks its prey, captures it in its “death embrace” and strangles it, and it can maintain its powerful grip for more than an hour.
Pythons live in tropical Australia, Africa and South Asia, particularly in swampy areas. In their natural habitat, pythons live only 10-15 years, but in a zoo they can live up to 25 years. The reasons are that young pythons often become victims of other animals. Even an adult reptile can be attacked by a crocodile or leopard, and babies are food for large birds of prey, and sometimes even wild pigs.
When the python senses danger, it crawls away, but if the attack was sudden, it desperately bites and hisses, inflicting serious wounds on the offender, although not fatal. When the royal python is in danger, it curls up into a strong, tight ball, and hides its head inside. It seems like a simple defense, but quite effective - try to unclench the muscular rings of his body! Even a human being cannot do this, let alone an animal. Python sheds 4 times a year.
What do pythons eat?
Pythons feed on frogs, rodents, and small animals, but they can cope with fairly large animals - antelopes, crocodiles, monkeys, wild boars. For example, a python catches bats right in flight - to do this, it clings to uneven surfaces in the ceiling and on the walls of caves with its tail. During a hunt, a python first lies in wait for its prey, then makes a swift lunge, wraps itself around its body and strangles it. Despite the massiveness of the body, it does not lose the mobility and flexibility required to strangle an animal.
Even a person can become prey to a large python, and cases have been recorded around the world where the victims were unattended children. The determination and power of the reptile makes it a dangerous predator. Prey weighing 30 kilograms can take up to 10 weeks to digest, and during digestion the python becomes clumsy and slow. Interestingly, in the cold season, digestion of even relatively small prey can last as long as 33 days, and in the hot months the whole process takes only 8 days. If a python has caught a large prey, it tries to retire to a quiet place where no one will disturb it.
How does a python hunt and get its food?
The python has poor eyesight, but nature has endowed it with heat-sensitive organs (thermolocators), which are located in the mouth area - this is how the reptile senses the approach of a warm-blooded animal, which will soon become prey. It is interesting that when a python attacks prey, it does not bite it, but works like a self-tightening knot, the so-called constrictor. To kill the prey, the python envelops it in powerful rings of its body and does not release the compression until the prey dies. The structure of the python's jaw seems to be specially designed for swallowing large prey: the lower jaw is attached to the upper jaw by ligaments that stretch perfectly for several tens of centimeters - which is why the python can even swallow a person. The lower jaw is fastened. If some fragments of prey could not be digested (fur, feathers), then the reptile simply regurgitates them. If a python has swallowed a large prey that takes several months to digest, then it will be enough for him to “dine” like this only 3-4 times a year. Biologists from Alabama conducted research looking at how the Burmese python digested the crocodile itself! Truly dramatic events immediately occur with the python’s body: organs quickly change their functions and size, increasing the speed of work. For example, the reptile’s kidneys increase by 72%, the heart rate increases by 40%, the liver becomes twice as large, as does the pancreas. The small intestine is filled with a huge amount of powerful acids and enzymes, and metabolism increases 40 times!
X-ray images of the process of digestion of a crocodile by a python in 7 days
Day 1 - the python caught and swallowed the crocodile 
Day 2 - the crocodile begins to digest in the python's stomach 
Day 3 - the python's body increased its heart rate to digest large food 
Day 4 - the python's kidneys almost doubled in size to digest prey 
Day 5 - in hot weather the speed of digestion is higher 
Day 6 - the crocodile is almost completely digested in the python's stomach 
Day 7 - final stage - the crocodile is digested in the snake’s stomach Digestion occurs at an unprecedented rate, and the pictures showed that the crocodile's body literally dissolved inside the python in just three days! After 4 days, only the skeleton and rough skin remain from the alligator, which will move into the large intestine - within a week, all the food will be digested without a trace.
Reproduction of pythons in the wild
Reproduction occurs only once a year; the male finds his wife by smell and begins caressing with the so-called anal spurs (rudiments of the hind limbs). It is interesting that after mating, the python ceases to be interested in both the female and the offspring. When the female lays a clutch of 10 to 100 eggs, she curls up around her, providing warmth and protection from predators. Incubation lasts about 88 days, after which young pythons measuring 60 cm in size are born, which are completely independent.
The female python is a very caring and attentive mother who carefully guards her future offspring and does not eat anything for 2-3 months.
- The Indian python can lay up to 107 eggs at a time.
- A case was recorded when a leopard was found in a python’s stomach, the size of which, for a minute, was 1.25 meters.
- The python has no venom.
- If the python is not provoked, it will not attack a person, despite its power and strength.
- According to unconfirmed reports, in one zoo there lived a python whose size was 12.2 meters - a record specimen of a reticulated python.
- In Asia, python meat is enjoyed as food.
- An African python swallowed an adult man in 2008, and a ten-year-old child in 2002.
- If it gets cold outside, the python can raise its own body temperature - this happens due to muscle contraction. The reptile is able to “warm up” itself 5-15 degrees above the environment.
- Among the aborigines on the coast of Guinea, the python-idol served as an object of veneration and worship.
- Pythons swim happily and can cover considerable distances.
- The green python, moving the tip of its tail, reminiscent of a worm, lures its prey.
- The black-headed python feeds exclusively on monitor lizards and snakes. Despite the fact that the prey snake can be fatally poisonous, its bite does not have the slightest effect on the python.
- The price of a python skin handbag is more than $300.
- The python has two lungs, like a human, although other snakes do not have a left lung.
- Pythons can dive in water and climb trees very well.
- A python may not eat for more than a year.
- Having wrapped the victim, the python easily breaks its bones.
- There is a type of hunting - live bait fishing, when the hunter climbs into the python's hole head first and wraps his hand in buffalo skin. The snake pounces on the protected hand, and with the other hand the hunter blocks its esophagus.
The longest python Medusa living in captivity
Did you know that the longest snake on Earth lives in captivity - her name is Medusa. The length of this giant, listed in the Guinness Book of Records, is 7.67 meters, and its weight has exceeded 158 kilograms. It takes at least fifteen people to hold this formidable handsome guy in his hands, and he doesn’t always like it when people touch him. It needs more than 14 kilograms of animals per week, although the python can eat more rabbits, piglets, deer and rodents.
Several times the snake easily “dined” on the carcass of an animal whose weight was over 40 kilograms. The owner of Medusa himself claims that his pet can easily kill him if he is dissatisfied with something. But fear is a bad advisor when dealing with such large reptiles.
The killing of a woman in Indonesia by a large snake has reportedly raised questions about how human development affects both humans and snakes.
On Thursday June 14, 54-year-old Wa Tiba was checking her home garden near a village on Muna Island in the southeastern Sulawesi province in the evening when she was attacked by a 7-meter (23-foot) reticulated python.
Local news reports said search efforts began on Friday when Chiba did not return home and only her belongings, including sandals and a flashlight, were found nearby. A snake with a bloated belly was reportedly found nearby on Saturday, about 50 meters from where its belongings were found. When the locals from the city of Chiba killed the snake and cut it open, the woman was found dead, completely intact and swallowed whole with all her clothes on. The video (below) of the snake's dissection clears up any questions about the python's ability to swallow a human.
The incident occurred just over a year after, also in Indonesia.
Reticulated pythons are native to Indonesia, and some speculate that human development is giving the pythons a greater chance of attack. Experts say more research is needed to say for sure.
How does this happen?
"They stop the heart," says Max Nickerson of the Florida Museum of Natural History. "It's amazing how quickly it happens."
Nickerson has kept reticulated pythons as pets and says every snake is different, but this species is "twitchy." When they kill, they plunge their large jaws into their victims and wrap themselves around them until blood circulation is cut off.
Photo. Body of a woman recovered from an open python
Scott Boback, a vertebrate ecologist at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, notes that the species is an ambush predator. Instead of looking for prey, he waits for his prey to pass by.
"An ambush predator, like a reticulated python, will use its tongue for chemosensing," says Bobak. “They will find places where the prey animal is walking back and forth. They detect these chemicals and can set up an ambush along the way.”
Why did this happen?
Reticulated python attacks are rare, which makes the results of an attack even more shocking. Typically, snakes feed on mammals (deer-sized) and birds, but they have been observed to eat more dangerous objects like.
When an Indonesian man was killed last March, experts suggested that deforestation due to palm oil production in that country could make attacks more likely as humans kill the snakes' prey and displace them from their natural habitats.
"Big snakes love to crawl and climb, and they get a lot of their food from the forests and trees," Nickerson says. By destroying their habitat, they may be forced to survive on alternative means of food.
However, it is currently unclear whether the snake that attacked Chiba was experiencing problems with habitat disturbance. And Boback notes that human conflict with snakes is nothing new.
"We've had a long relationship with big snakes throughout our history," he says. Research has shown that our brains develop a fear of snakes as an evolutionary form of defense.
One study published in 2011 found that a group of people living in the Philippine jungle not only shared an evolutionary history with snakes, but also competed with them. One survey found that 26 percent of villagers had been attacked by pythons.
More research is needed to see whether the numbers are actually increasing in Indonesia or elsewhere. Bobak notes that any change in the landscape could affect the reptiles' behavior, but scientists are unsure to what extent pythons can adapt to large numbers of people.
Video. Python swallows a woman in Indonesia
Original taken from irnella V
I kept thinking that a boa constrictor (or some other snake) CANNOT SWALLOW a person for purely physiological reasons. All films about this are fiction and horror films. But what does it turn out to be? Here's yesterday's news.
In Russia, a drunk can freeze, but it turned out that in hot India it is also dangerous to get completely drunk. A man lying in the cold on the street near a store in the Indian state of Kerala was devoured by a huge man-eating python.
A snake that swallowed a man. Photo: India, Kerala state.
The incident happened in the Indian state of Kerala, which, like Goa, attracts a large number of tourists to its coast.
In India, a careless man decided to have a pleasant evening, but did not bring any alcohol home and drank the purchased drinks right next to a liquor store. The drunkard settled down there for the night.
And in the morning, local residents found a bloated snake on the threshold of a shop. It turned out that the python was crawling past the liquor store and saw the “food”. He strangled the man and then swallowed his victim. After such a hearty “lunch,” the reptile was unable to crawl away and lay down at the scene of the emergency.
The bloated snake was subsequently discovered by local residents, LOTD reports.
This example can serve as an edification to numerous tourists who go to India on vacation and often forget about moderation in relation to alcohol and other relaxing substances.
Here's a case like this:
A huge python, according to the children's stories, suddenly grabbed their friend when they were collecting fallen mangoes in the garden. The snake quickly wrapped itself around the child, tightly squeezing his arms and legs. The boy was so scared that he didn’t even scream or cry.
“The python squeezed him more and more until the boy closed his eyes and threw his head back,” said 11-year-old Cave, an eyewitness to the tragedy. “I realized that he was dead or unconscious. Then the snake opened its mouth wide and began to swallow him all at once, starting with the head.” For three hours, the children silently watched what was happening, afraid to move or call for help.
Later, police and snake experts found no traces of the tragedy - the child and his clothes disappeared along with the snake. On the rumpled grass there was only a trail leading to the spring. Herpentologists explained that the African python needed water to better digest its prey.
According to experts, this is the first case of cannibalism for this species of snake. The python apparently woke up after hibernation and was very hungry.
The reptile, swollen with a human body, was found nearby in the jungle; it could not crawl far. The snake was killed and immediately cut up, but the boy could not be saved - he died of suffocation.
Another case:
It turns out that the plot of the film “Anaconda” has a real basis and in our sinful world there are giant reptiles that can swallow a person whole.
Typically, snakes prefer to attack smaller creatures that they can easily swallow, but despite this, there are many documented cases of these reptiles swallowing livestock, dogs and even baby hippos.
Unfortunately, the diet of these predators is not limited to such a meager set of dishes, and creeping reptiles are not averse to tasting human flesh if possible. It’s hard to believe, but there really are giant giants on Earth for whom humans are just prey.
Four friends: Jose Ronaldo. Fernando Contaro, Miguel Orvaro and Sebastian Forte went to Mato Grosso, Brazil for camping and fishing. The fishing went well, and the alcohol flowed freely. Returning from the river, the friends noticed the absence of the fourth member of their cheerful company - dentist Jose Ronaldo. The tipsy fishermen looked for their drinking buddy before dark, but Jose seemed to have disappeared into the ground.
The next day, in a cheerful and high spirits, they went in search, hoping to find their friend lying drunk in some ditch. Towards evening they discovered his torn clothes.
“At first we decided that it was a robbery: the ground around was dug up, as if someone had been fighting on it,” says one of the fishermen, Fernando Contaro. “My heart was relieved, because if he was attacked by a person, and not a wild animal, then he could survive!”
After examining the scene of the struggle, they discovered a deep footprint in the ground leading into the forest. Experienced hunter Sebastian Forte immediately said that a snake had left him... a very large snake, at least 10 meters long. The sun was already setting and the men decided to return to camp.
The next morning the men followed the snake's trail. What they discovered at the end of their journey shocked them: lying in front of them was a giant anaconda with an incredibly bloated body. Miguel pressed the python's head to the ground with a stick, and Fernando shot the reptile twice in the head with a revolver. The anaconda was towed to the camp, where they cut open its stomach and removed the dentist’s body, which had already begun to digest.
If a snake swallows a person, which happens relatively rarely, then it is certainly only for the purpose of “eating a little.” Here we could quote lengthy instructions recently published on the Internet on what to do if you are swallowed by a python or anaconda. The basic idea is that you need to let the snake swallow more of its legs, and then, with a sharp movement of a sharp knife, cut its head from the side from the inside. Where to get a sharp knife and what to do if you start to be swallowed from the head - this instruction does not tell you.
The only difficulty when swallowing a person should be caused by the shoulders. An adult, broad-shouldered man can hardly be swallowed...
The snake's jaw can, of course, move apart, but only to a certain limit. The only possible way is if the snake manages to swallow a person lying on its side (or itself turns its head so that the victim enters it sideways).
So an anaconda may well swallow a child, a woman, a small, narrow-shouldered man...
Case three. Why shouldn't snakes eat hippos?
The answer is simple, hippos have too thick skin that more than one snake simply cannot digest.
(It's an unpleasant sight, think twice before watching)
Video: a stupid python that ate a baby hippopotamus, crawled with this carcass for a week, became terribly hungry and was forced to vomit this delicacy out of itself.
Here is a very recent case in March of this year:
A seven-meter python swallowed an adult man.
On the island of Sulawesi, which belongs to Indonesia, a giant python swallowed an adult man whole, reports the Daily Mail.
According to the publication, 25-year-old Akbar Salubiro disappeared on Sunday, March 26. On this day, he was going to a neighboring village to collect palm oil.
The next evening, fellow villagers concerned about his disappearance began a search and found a seven-meter bloated python in the backyard of the man’s house. They decided to autopsy the reptile and found Salubiro's body.
Village council spokesman Salubiro Junaidi said that the night before the snake was discovered, people heard screams coming from the palm grove. He did not specify why no one came to the call.
And now just some interesting information about snakes on this topic.
Bernard Grzimek.
From the book “Animals are my life.”
Can a snake swallow a person?
“There is no doubt that the ancients meant by their dragons our modern giant snakes. The amazing size of these animals, their considerable strength and the general fear of snakes in general make the exaggerations of which the ancients were guilty very clear.<…>Over time, human imagination endowed dragons with even greater richness, and from the incomprehensible tales of eastern people, images gradually grew for which a reasonable person searched in vain for originals, because information about the giant snakes themselves was almost lost. The more stubbornly uneducated people stuck to the favorite description of a large dragon or a gorynych serpent, spewed onto the earth for the destruction of the whole world "(A. E. Bram)
A giant twenty-meter or even thirty-meter snake, hiding on a branch, lies in wait for its prey. From a blow to the crown of her head, hard as a stone, a man taken by surprise falls almost unconscious to the ground, and the snake, with a lightning-fast throw, rushes at him and wraps him in its coils, breaking all his bones in an iron embrace. This happens in cases where brave liberators who cut the snake into pieces with knives do not arrive in time to help...
Descriptions of such heartbreaking scenes can be found in many adventure novels and even in other reports of expeditions to the unexplored tropics.
Do giant snakes really attack humans? Are they capable of swallowing us? There are hardly any other animals that are fantasized about as much as pythons, anacondas or boa constrictors. And therefore, it is precisely with regard to these animals that even a specialist finds it very difficult in each individual case to decide what is true and what is fiction.
This starts with determining the length. Even serious travelers have claimed that anacondas 30 or even 40 meters long are found in the Amazon forests. But they, as a rule, kept silent about whether they measured these snakes themselves or know this from eyewitness accounts.
Anaconda is the same boa constrictor, only South American. It is she who is considered the largest and strongest among all the giant snakes in the world. Another South American snake, also no less famous and also a boa constrictor (Constrictor), reaches a length of “only” five to six meters.
It must be said that measuring a snake is not so easy. It is most convenient to do this, of course, when it stretches to its full length. But for a large snake such a position is completely unnatural; some of them are simply not able to accept it - they need to bend at least the very end of their tail to the side in order to have support. Such a strong animal will not voluntarily allow itself to be straightened for measurement. In a dead snake, the body usually becomes so ossified that it is even more difficult to measure. If you judge the length of snakes by their skins that go on sale, then it is very easy to fall into a mistake: after all, this skin is sold by the meter, and therefore, while it is fresh, it can be stretched in length by 20 percent, and some say even by all 50. Snake hunters often use this.
It is interesting that live snakes are also sold by the meter. Snake traders charge zoos for small and medium-sized pythons from 80 pfennig to one mark for every centimeter. The New York Zoological Society announced many years ago that it would pay 20 thousand marks to anyone who brought a live anaconda over ten meters long; however, no one has yet been able to earn this tempting amount.
And yet it is quite possible that such giants exist or existed until very recently. The weight of such an animal should be quite impressive; Thus, the Asian reticulated python measures 8.8 meters and weighs 115 kilograms. It’s no wonder that such a colossus, living in the thicket of a virgin forest, is not so easy to defeat without a whole horde of helpers. And then you still need to be able to deliver it unharmed to the airfield or port.
The record length of the hieroglyphic python (Python sebae), widespread in Africa, is 9.8 meters. The Indian or tiger python (Python molurus) reaches 6.6 meters, the East Asian reticulated python (Python reticulatus) - either 8.4 meters or 10 meters, depending on which source you believe. A little smaller than the amethyst python.
So, in fact, we have already listed all six giants of the snake world: four oviparous pythons - natives of the Old World and two viviparous boas - of the New. Among the 2,500 species of snakes that inhabit the globe, there are a number of other species of boas and pythons, but they are much smaller.
Giant snakes are not poisonous. Unlike the fat giants of the snake kingdom, poisonous snakes (for example, the African mamba, sometimes reaching four meters, and the even longer king cobra) are thinner and slimmer.
It takes a snake a lot of time to reach its enormous size. The eight-meter reticulated python living at the Pittsburgh Zoo grew by only 25 centimeters in a year. The older a snake gets, the slower it grows.
It is completely impossible to determine from the appearance of a snake whether it is a female or a male. A pair of hieroglyphic pythons, which arrived at the New York Zoo at the age of one, grew at the same rate for the first six to seven years, but then the female began to noticeably lag in growth. The fact is that during this time she began to fast every year for six months: during the maturation of the eggs and when she warmed them, curled up around them.
We don’t know to what age giant snakes can live in the wild. No one has ever ringed them in their habitats, as has been done for decades, for example, with migratory birds. We can judge their age only from data obtained from zoos. The anaconda lived the longest at the Washington Zoo - 28 years (from 1899 to 1927). One of the boas lived in England at the Bristol Zoo for 23 years and 3 months, and the hieroglyphic python reached the age of eighteen there. A tiger python at the San Diego Zoo (California) lived to be 22 years and 9 months, and two East Asian reticulated pythons - one in London and the other in Paris - died at the age of 21.
The giants of the snake kingdom are the only large animals on Earth that do not have a voice, like, in fact, all other snakes. At best they can hiss. Snakes are not only mute, but also deaf. They do not perceive sound vibrations in the air - they do not have ears for this, like other animals. But they perfectly perceive any, even the most insignificant, shaking of the soil or litter on which they rest.
In addition, these deaf-mute giants also have poor vision. Their eyes are devoid of movable eyelids, and the transparent leathery film that protects the eye during each molt is separated along with all the skin and removed, like glass from a watch. The snake eye lacks the muscles of the iris, therefore the pupil cannot contract in bright light and dilate in dim light. The snake barely reacts to changes in the lighting of the eyes: the lens in it cannot bend, like ours, which deprives snakes of the opportunity to carefully examine objects located at close or far distances at will. To look at anything, the snake has to move its entire head first and then back. Perhaps all these are very useful properties (necessary, for example, for swimming and especially for looking at various objects under water), but, by God, much more improved eyes are found in the animal world.
Since the python, like other snakes, does not close its eyes during sleep, it is always very difficult to determine whether it is sleeping or awake. Some snake researchers argue that a sleeping snake faces downwards, meaning its pupil is at the bottom edge of the eye; others dispute this claim.
The immobility of snake eyes gave rise to the widely repeated fairy tale that snakes supposedly hypnotize, as if paralyzing their prey with their gaze. Frogs, lizards or small rodents do sometimes sit completely motionless in the presence of a giant boa constrictor, but this is explained by different reasons: sometimes they simply do not notice the danger, and sometimes they become numb with fear; such freezing brings them a certain benefit, since the snake does not distinguish a motionless victim. After all, it is only when the frog runs away that the snake overtakes it.
How, after all, do these deaf-mute and, moreover, short-sighted giants find food for themselves? It turns out that they have developed sensory organs that we do not possess. For example, they unmistakably sense heat from a long distance. The snake senses a human hand already at a distance of thirty centimeters. Therefore, it is quite easy for silently crawling snakes to find even those warm-blooded animals that are carefully hidden in shelters. So that their own breathing does not interfere with their breathing, some of them (for example, pythons) have nostrils facing upward and backward.
But the sense of smell is most developed in snakes. It is quite surprising that the organ of smell is located in their mouth, on the palate, and the necessary information is delivered to it by the tongue, which extracts various small particles from the air. Thus, snakes do not need daylight; they can crawl in the tracks of their prey with equal success both day and night.
Once, not far from the Serengeti, my son Michael and I came across a huge hieroglyphic python, reaching three to four meters in length. We decided to take him with us. By the way, giant snakes, if they are not holding on to a tree or tangled in bushes, are not that difficult to catch. In an hour they can travel no more than one and a half kilometers - if they suddenly have the desire to crawl for an hour. Giant snakes move completely differently than their small relatives. They move forward, wriggling with their whole body, while in a giant snake the abdominal scales are used for this purpose. The scales are set in motion by muscles extending from the ribs (the ribs themselves remain motionless), causing it to move forward and backward like the small scoops of an excavator.
At that time we did not yet have much experience in handling snakes and therefore at first we showed extreme caution when guiding the python with spears. But in the end, we still decided to grab the snake by the tail, and it didn’t even try to attack us. We managed to stuff her into a bag, which we tied and put under a cot in our tent for the night. Unfortunately, the next morning the bag was empty. The huge snake still managed to free itself. However, from the trail she left, it was easy to find out where she crawled. This trail was straight, distinct and wide, as if someone had rolled a car tire.
Not a single snake, including poisonous ones, is able to catch up with a running person. But giant snakes can swim well, much better than other land animals. As for the anaconda, it can be classified as an aquatic rather than a terrestrial animal.
Snakes and the sea don't care. Thus, one boa constrictor (Constriktor) was carried by the current 320 kilometers from the South American coast and washed up on the island of St. Vincent, where he arrived in good spirits.
When the Krakatoa volcano erupted in 1888, all life on the island of the same name was destroyed. Biologists observed how, over the subsequent years and decades, various lichens, plants and animals gradually reappeared here. So, the first reptiles to appear there were rock pythons, which by 1908 again took possession of the island.
The giant snakes have not yet completely turned into round ropes, as happened with other representatives of the snake tribe. Boas and pythons, like us, still have a pair of lungs, while in most other snakes the left lung has disappeared, and the right has greatly elongated and expanded noticeably. The giant snakes have small remains of pelvic and hip bones. But only two pitiful claws remained from the outside of the hind legs - to the right and to the left of the anus.
How do such slow giants manage to catch their prey? It should be said from the very beginning that the statement that they knock a person or any animal unconscious with a blow to their head is absolutely false. The heads of these giant monsters are not particularly hard, and in any case softer than ours. The snake itself would not be too pleased to use it for boxing. In addition, the attack of a giant snake is by no means as lightning fast as it is imagined. The force with which a snake weighing 125 kilograms attacks a victim is no greater than the force with which a dog weighing 20 kilograms attacks. Of course, some frail, unathletic European might fall from such a push. But a more or less dexterous man is quite capable of handling a four-meter boa constrictor alone, at least if he manages to stay on his feet; he can pull down the snake coils entwined around him with a few energetic jerks.
For a snake, it is much more important not to hit its head, but to grab the victim with its teeth. To do this, she opens her mouth to the limit. The reticulated python has a hundred back-curved teeth arranged in six rows in its mouth. Therefore, if he managed to grab at least a finger, it is not so easy to pull it back. To do this, you need to try to unclench the snake’s jaws and first stick your hand even further into the mouth, and then pull it out.
Only when the snake has firmly grabbed the victim with its teeth does it begin to wrap its coils around it. Therefore, those who have to deal with giant snakes should always remember to grab them only by the “scruff” - behind the head, so that they cannot bite.
Please take a closer look at the film footage or photographs depicting the “struggle” of a man with a giant snake, which allegedly strangles its victim. You will almost certainly notice that the “victim” has grabbed the snake by the throat. In such cases, the person himself wraps the snake around himself and then plays out the whole scene of a frantic struggle.
But even if the snake managed to grab its victim with its teeth and wrap it in several rings, this does not mean that it can “crush all its bones.” Giant snakes, even if they weigh more than a hundred kilograms, do not at all have the remarkable strength that is attributed to them. After all, the larger and heavier the animal, the less strength it has per kilogram of body weight. Thus, a louse, given its weight, is 10 thousand times stronger than an elephant. And smaller snakes can squeeze and strangle a suitable victim much more strongly than giant snakes can squeeze their own.
Giant snakes kill not by crushing bones, but by strangulation. They squeeze the chest of their victim so much that she is unable to breathe air into her lungs. It is possible that prolonged compression may paralyze the heart. Snake rings, coiled around the victim's torso, act more like a rubber gut or rubber bandage than a strong<анат. Раздавить таким способом твердый костяк абсолютно невозможно. Поэтому когда в некоторых сообщениях о нападении змей фигурируют раздавленные человеческие черепа, то заранее можно твердо сказать, что это досужий вымысел. Человеческий череп достаточно твердый орешек, и мягкими, эластичными предметами его не расколешь!
My colleague Dr. Gustav Lederer, who directed our exotarium for forty years, carefully examined three pigs, three rabbits and three rats that had been killed but not yet swallowed by giant snakes. No broken bones were found in the victims. But in the already swallowed prey there were broken bones.
Giant snakes are kept in many zoos around the world and generally do not show any aggression as long as they are left alone. They are even quite easy to tame. Pythons living in the wild, when they are attacked or want to be grabbed, defend themselves only by trying to bite, and almost never try to throw their rings at the enemy; they do this only with prey that they are going to swallow.
In zoos, there are sometimes circumstances in which force must be used against a snake (for example, when moving a newly arrived resident into a terrarium or when veterinary intervention is necessary). To hold the snake, people are placed in this way: for every linear meter of the snake there is one person who must hold his part tightly, under no circumstances letting go of it.
I've been asking everywhere about any case where a snake in a zoo killed someone, but until now I had never heard of it. True, I was told that in a Russian animal sales company several decades ago, a seven- or eight-meter reticulated python wrapped itself around the senior servant Siegfried and “broke several of his ribs.”
One former dancer, who once performed dances with snakes, told the servants of our Frankfurt Zoo that one of the snakes once squeezed her so hard that she broke two ribs. But in order for a slender girl to break two ribs, no supernatural forces are required. For example, one day one of my sons, in a fit, hugged his bride so tenderly that something crunched inside her. It turned out that he broke her rib...
Although giant boas, as already mentioned, can rarely be tamed, nevertheless, the snakes with which dancers perform in various variety shows and circuses do not necessarily have to be tame. In order to wrap snakes around your shoulders and waist during a dance without any risk, it is enough to cool them down before the performance, then you can do almost anything with them. These cold-blooded animals become active only after they have warmed up thoroughly.
Of course, dragging snakes around on tour, especially in winter, or keeping them in poorly heated stage restrooms or hotel rooms does not do them any good.
They do not survive such a life for long and die. Therefore, dancers have to frequently renew their supply of pythons.
It is not true that giant snakes have the habit of hanging from a tree by holding the end of their tail to a branch and thus catching their prey. The statement that they pre-wet the dead animal with their saliva to facilitate swallowing is also incorrect. This misconception is based on the fact that snakes are often forced to regurgitate swallowed prey. This happens for various reasons: either the prey turns out to be prohibitively large, or when swallowed it takes an awkward position, or it has horns that prevent it from moving along the esophagus, and sometimes someone simply scared the snake, and this prevented it from calmly coping with the prey. Of course, a burped animal is abundantly moistened with saliva, which led people who accidentally saw it to misinterpret it.
Even very large and heavy snakes are able to crawl into relatively small loopholes, narrow windows or cracks in a fence. In this way, they usually sneak into chicken coops, pigsties or barns where goats are kept. And so, when they, having swallowed their victim whole, try to crawl back into the same hole from which they came, a huge thickening on the body does not allow them to get out, and they find themselves trapped. Here, it would seem, use your ability to regurgitate swallowed prey to free yourself from captivity! But snakes, as it turned out, “don’t have enough intelligence” for this.
Similar cases have been described quite often.
Original taken from masterok
V
“There is no doubt that the ancients meant by their dragons our modern giant snakes. The amazing size of these animals, their considerable strength and the general fear of snakes in general make the exaggerations of which the ancients were guilty very clear.<…>Over time, human imagination endowed dragons with even greater richness, and from the incomprehensible tales of eastern people, images gradually grew for which a reasonable person searched in vain for originals, because information about the giant snakes themselves was almost lost. The more stubbornly uneducated people stuck to the favorite description of a large dragon or a gorynych serpent, spewed onto the earth for the destruction of the whole world "(A. E. Bram)
A giant twenty-meter or even thirty-meter snake, hiding on a branch, lies in wait for its prey. From a blow to the crown of her head, hard as a stone, a man taken by surprise falls almost unconscious to the ground, and the snake, with a lightning-fast throw, rushes at him and wraps him in its coils, breaking all his bones in an iron embrace. This happens in cases where brave liberators who cut the snake into pieces with knives do not arrive in time to help...
Descriptions of such heartbreaking scenes can be found in many adventure novels and even in other reports of expeditions to the unexplored tropics.
Do giant snakes really attack humans? Are they capable of swallowing us? There are hardly any other animals that are fantasized about as much as pythons, anacondas or boa constrictors. And therefore, it is precisely with regard to these animals that even a specialist finds it very difficult in each individual case to decide what is true and what is fiction.
This starts with determining the length. Even serious travelers have claimed that anacondas 30 or even 40 meters long are found in the Amazon forests. But they, as a rule, kept silent about whether they measured these snakes themselves or know this from eyewitness accounts.
Anaconda is the same boa constrictor, only South American. It is she who is considered the largest and strongest among all the giant snakes in the world. Another South American snake, also no less famous and also a boa constrictor (Constrictor), reaches a length of “only” five to six meters.
It must be said that measuring a snake is not so easy. It is most convenient to do this, of course, when it stretches to its full length. But for a large snake such a position is completely unnatural; some of them are simply not able to accept it - they need to bend at least the very end of their tail to the side in order to have support. Such a strong animal will not voluntarily allow itself to be straightened for measurement. In a dead snake, the body usually becomes so ossified that it is even more difficult to measure. If you judge the length of snakes by their skins that go on sale, then it is very easy to fall into a mistake: after all, this skin is sold by the meter, and therefore, while it is fresh, it can be stretched in length by 20 percent, and some say even by all 50. Snake hunters often use this.
It is interesting that live snakes are also sold by the meter. Snake traders charge zoos for small and medium-sized pythons from 80 pfennig to one mark for every centimeter. The New York Zoological Society announced many years ago that it would pay 20 thousand marks to anyone who brought a live anaconda over ten meters long; however, no one has yet been able to earn this tempting amount.
And yet it is quite possible that such giants exist or existed until very recently. The weight of such an animal should be quite impressive; Thus, the Asian reticulated python measures 8.8 meters and weighs 115 kilograms. It’s no wonder that such a colossus, living in the thicket of a virgin forest, is not so easy to defeat without a whole horde of helpers. And then you still need to be able to deliver it unharmed to the airfield or port.
The record length of the hieroglyphic python (Python sebae), widespread in Africa, is 9.8 meters. The Indian or tiger python (Python molurus) reaches 6.6 meters, the East Asian reticulated python (Python reticulatus) - either 8.4 meters or 10 meters, depending on which source you believe. A little smaller than the amethyst python.
So, in fact, we have already listed all six giants of the snake world: four oviparous pythons - natives of the Old World and two viviparous boas - of the New. Among the 2,500 species of snakes that inhabit the globe, there are a number of other species of boas and pythons, but they are much smaller.
Giant snakes are not poisonous. Unlike the fat giants of the snake kingdom, poisonous snakes (for example, the African mamba, sometimes reaching four meters, and the even longer king cobra) are thinner and slimmer.
It takes a snake a lot of time to reach its enormous size. The eight-meter reticulated python living at the Pittsburgh Zoo grew by only 25 centimeters in a year. The older a snake gets, the slower it grows.
It is completely impossible to determine from the appearance of a snake whether it is a female or a male. A pair of hieroglyphic pythons, which arrived at the New York Zoo at the age of one, grew at the same rate for the first six to seven years, but then the female began to noticeably lag in growth. The fact is that during this time she began to fast every year for six months: during the maturation of the eggs and when she warmed them, curled up around them.
We don’t know to what age giant snakes can live in the wild. No one has ever ringed them in their habitats, as has been done for decades, for example, with migratory birds. We can judge their age only from data obtained from zoos. The anaconda lived the longest at the Washington Zoo - 28 years (from 1899 to 1927). One of the boas lived in England at the Bristol Zoo for 23 years and 3 months, and the hieroglyphic python reached the age of eighteen there. A tiger python at the San Diego Zoo (California) lived to be 22 years and 9 months, and two East Asian reticulated pythons - one in London and the other in Paris - died at the age of 21.
The giants of the snake kingdom are the only large animals on Earth that do not have a voice, like, in fact, all other snakes. At best they can hiss. Snakes are not only mute, but also deaf. They do not perceive sound vibrations in the air - they do not have ears for this, like other animals. But they perfectly perceive any, even the most insignificant, shaking of the soil or litter on which they rest.
In addition, these deaf-mute giants also have poor vision. Their eyes are devoid of movable eyelids, and the transparent leathery film that protects the eye during each molt is separated along with all the skin and removed, like glass from a watch. The snake eye lacks the muscles of the iris, therefore the pupil cannot contract in bright light and dilate in dim light. The snake barely reacts to changes in the lighting of the eyes: the lens in it cannot bend, like ours, which deprives snakes of the opportunity to carefully examine objects located at close or far distances at will. To look at anything, the snake has to move its entire head first and then back. Perhaps all these are very useful properties (necessary, for example, for swimming and especially for looking at various objects under water), but, by God, much more improved eyes are found in the animal world.
Since the python, like other snakes, does not close its eyes during sleep, it is always very difficult to determine whether it is sleeping or awake. Some snake researchers argue that a sleeping snake faces downwards, meaning its pupil is at the bottom edge of the eye; others dispute this claim.
The immobility of snake eyes gave rise to the widely repeated fairy tale that snakes supposedly hypnotize, as if paralyzing their prey with their gaze. Frogs, lizards or small rodents do sometimes sit completely motionless in the presence of a giant boa constrictor, but this is explained by different reasons: sometimes they simply do not notice the danger, and sometimes they become numb with fear; such freezing brings them a certain benefit, since the snake does not distinguish a motionless victim. After all, it is only when the frog runs away that the snake overtakes it.
How, after all, do these deaf-mute and, moreover, short-sighted giants find food for themselves? It turns out that they have developed sensory organs that we do not possess. For example, they unmistakably sense heat from a long distance. The snake senses a human hand already at a distance of thirty centimeters. Therefore, it is quite easy for silently crawling snakes to find even those warm-blooded animals that are carefully hidden in shelters. So that their own breathing does not interfere with their breathing, some of them (for example, pythons) have nostrils facing upward and backward.
But the sense of smell is most developed in snakes. It is quite surprising that the organ of smell is located in their mouth, on the palate, and the necessary information is delivered to it by the tongue, which extracts various small particles from the air. Thus, snakes do not need daylight; they can crawl in the tracks of their prey with equal success both day and night.
Once, not far from the Serengeti, my son Michael and I came across a huge hieroglyphic python, reaching three to four meters in length. We decided to take him with us. By the way, giant snakes, if they are not holding on to a tree or tangled in bushes, are not that difficult to catch. In an hour they can travel no more than one and a half kilometers - if they suddenly have the desire to crawl for an hour. Giant snakes move completely differently than their small relatives. They move forward, wriggling with their whole body, while in a giant snake the abdominal scales are used for this purpose. The scales are set in motion by muscles extending from the ribs (the ribs themselves remain motionless), causing it to move forward and backward like the small scoops of an excavator.
At that time we did not yet have much experience in handling snakes and therefore at first we showed extreme caution when guiding the python with spears. But in the end, we still decided to grab the snake by the tail, and it didn’t even try to attack us. We managed to stuff her into a bag, which we tied and put under a cot in our tent for the night. Unfortunately, the next morning the bag was empty. The huge snake still managed to free itself. However, from the trail she left, it was easy to find out where she crawled. This trail was straight, distinct and wide, as if someone had rolled a car tire.
Not a single snake, including poisonous ones, is able to catch up with a running person. But giant snakes can swim well, much better than other land animals. As for the anaconda, it can be classified as an aquatic rather than a terrestrial animal.
Snakes and the sea don't care. Thus, one boa constrictor (Constriktor) was carried by the current 320 kilometers from the South American coast and washed up on the island of St. Vincent, where he arrived in good spirits.
When the Krakatoa volcano erupted in 1888, all life on the island of the same name was destroyed. Biologists observed how, over the subsequent years and decades, various lichens, plants and animals gradually reappeared here. So, the first reptiles to appear there were rock pythons, which by 1908 again took possession of the island.
The giant snakes have not yet completely turned into round ropes, as happened with other representatives of the snake tribe. Boas and pythons, like us, still have a pair of lungs, while in most other snakes the left lung has disappeared, and the right has greatly elongated and expanded noticeably. The giant snakes have small remains of pelvic and hip bones. But only two pitiful claws remained from the outside of the hind legs - to the right and to the left of the anus.
How do such slow giants manage to catch their prey? It should be said from the very beginning that the statement that they knock a person or any animal unconscious with a blow to their head is absolutely false. The heads of these giant monsters are not particularly hard, and in any case softer than ours. The snake itself would not be too pleased to use it for boxing. In addition, the attack of a giant snake is by no means as lightning fast as it is imagined. The force with which a snake weighing 125 kilograms attacks a victim is no greater than the force with which a dog weighing 20 kilograms attacks. Of course, some frail, unathletic European might fall from such a push. But a more or less dexterous man is quite capable of handling a four-meter boa constrictor alone, at least if he manages to stay on his feet; he can pull down the snake coils entwined around him with a few energetic jerks.
For a snake, it is much more important not to hit its head, but to grab the victim with its teeth. To do this, she opens her mouth to the limit. The reticulated python has a hundred back-curved teeth arranged in six rows in its mouth. Therefore, if he managed to grab at least a finger, it is not so easy to pull it back. To do this, you need to try to unclench the snake’s jaws and first stick your hand even further into the mouth, and then pull it out.
Only when the snake has firmly grabbed the victim with its teeth does it begin to wrap its coils around it. Therefore, those who have to deal with giant snakes should always remember that they need to be grabbed only by the “scruff” - behind the head, so that they cannot bite.
Please take a closer look at the film footage or photographs depicting the “struggle” of a man with a giant snake, which allegedly strangles its victim. You will almost certainly notice that the “victim” has grabbed the snake by the throat. In such cases, the person himself wraps the snake around himself and then plays out the whole scene of a frantic struggle.
But even if the snake managed to grab its victim with its teeth and wrap it in several rings, this does not mean that it can “crush all its bones.” Giant snakes, even if they weigh more than a hundred kilograms, do not at all have the remarkable strength that is attributed to them. After all, the larger and heavier the animal, the less strength it has per kilogram of body weight. Thus, a louse, given its weight, is 10 thousand times stronger than an elephant. And smaller snakes can squeeze and strangle a suitable victim much more strongly than giant snakes can squeeze their own.
Giant snakes kill not by crushing bones, but by strangulation. They squeeze the chest of their victim so much that she is unable to breathe air into her lungs. It is possible that prolonged compression may paralyze the heart. Snake rings, coiled around the victim's torso, act more like a rubber gut or rubber bandage than a strong<анат. Раздавить таким способом твердый костяк абсолютно невозможно. Поэтому когда в некоторых сообщениях о нападении змей фигурируют раздавленные человеческие черепа, то заранее можно твердо сказать, что это досужий вымысел. Человеческий череп достаточно твердый орешек, и мягкими, эластичными предметами его не расколешь!
My colleague Dr. Gustav Lederer, who directed our exotarium for forty years, carefully examined three pigs, three rabbits and three rats that had been killed but not yet swallowed by giant snakes. No broken bones were found in the victims. But in the already swallowed prey there were broken bones.
Giant snakes are kept in many zoos around the world and generally do not show any aggression as long as they are left alone. They are even quite easy to tame. Pythons living in the wild, when they are attacked or want to be grabbed, defend themselves only by trying to bite, and almost never try to throw their rings at the enemy; they do this only with prey that they are going to swallow.
In zoos, there are sometimes circumstances in which force must be used against a snake (for example, when moving a newly arrived resident into a terrarium or when veterinary intervention is necessary). To hold the snake, people are placed in this way: for every linear meter of the snake there is one person who must hold his part tightly, under no circumstances letting go of it.
I've been asking everywhere about any case where a snake in a zoo killed someone, but until now I had never heard of it. True, I was told that in a Russian animal sales company several decades ago, a seven- or eight-meter reticulated python wrapped itself around the senior servant Siegfried and “broke several of his ribs.”
One former dancer, who once performed dances with snakes, told the servants of our Frankfurt Zoo that one of the snakes once squeezed her so hard that she broke two ribs. But in order for a slender girl to break two ribs, no supernatural forces are required. For example, one day one of my sons, in a fit, hugged his bride so tenderly that something crunched inside her. It turned out that he broke her rib...
Although giant boas, as already mentioned, can rarely be tamed, nevertheless, the snakes with which dancers perform in various variety shows and circuses do not necessarily have to be tame. In order to wrap snakes around your shoulders and waist during a dance without any risk, it is enough to cool them down before the performance, then you can do almost anything with them. These cold-blooded animals become active only after they have warmed up thoroughly.
Of course, dragging snakes around on tour, especially in winter, or keeping them in poorly heated stage restrooms or hotel rooms does not do them any good.
They do not survive such a life for long and die. Therefore, dancers have to frequently renew their supply of pythons.
It is not true that giant snakes have the habit of hanging from a tree by holding the end of their tail to a branch and thus catching their prey. The statement that they pre-wet the dead animal with their saliva to facilitate swallowing is also incorrect. This misconception is based on the fact that snakes are often forced to regurgitate swallowed prey. This happens for various reasons: either the prey turns out to be prohibitively large, or when swallowed it takes an awkward position, or it has horns that prevent it from moving along the esophagus, and sometimes someone simply scared the snake, and this prevented it from calmly coping with the prey. Of course, a burped animal is abundantly moistened with saliva, which led people who accidentally saw it to misinterpret it.
Even very large and heavy snakes are able to crawl into relatively small loopholes, narrow windows or cracks in a fence. In this way, they usually sneak into chicken coops, pigsties or barns where goats are kept. And so, when they, having swallowed their victim whole, try to crawl back into the same hole from which they came, a huge thickening on the body does not allow them to get out, and they find themselves trapped. Here, it would seem, use your ability to regurgitate swallowed prey to free yourself from captivity! But snakes, as it turned out, “don’t have enough intelligence” for this.
Similar cases have been described quite often.
Bernard Grzimek.
From the book “Animals are my life.”