While reticulated pythons have a reputation for being aggressive, they generally do not display aggression when handled regularly in zoological settings. "I'm pretty sure it happens every year," Greene said.The largest recorded reticulated python in a zoological environment was 28.5 feet long and about 320 pounds. Usually, he said, we don't hear about people being eaten because pythons rarely leave a carcass as a trace. Greene, an emeritus professor in Cornell's Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said the case of Akbar is special because there's video evidence of his body being pulled from the snake. Most often, they were able to escape by using a knife or a shotgun. Among the nearly 60 hunter-gatherers interviewed, more than a quarter had been attacked by a python and had the bites and scars to prove it. The study found it was pretty common for humans to be attacked by reticulated pythons. Once, a python went into a thatched house, killed two children and was swallowing one of them when the father came home and killed the snake with a bolo knife. Headland, Greene found reticulated pythons killed at least six Filipino hunter-gatherers from 1934 to 1973. Over the course of about an hour, Greene estimates, the snake would walk its teeth over a person's body until it is completely inside the animal's stomach.Ī person's body would be digested by the snake's stomach acid, Greene said.Īkbar's death, noted Greene, isn't the first one. Also, a python's lower jaw comes apart, allowing it to further open up. Pythons can swallow humans because their lower jaw is indirectly attached to their skull, allowing it to expand. "They certainly can pack a huge force as they're constricting." "Big pythons are incredibly powerful animals with huge muscles to both move and eat and constrict," said Stephen Ressel, a professor at the College of Atlantic. From one or all of those reasons, he said, a person would quickly die. Then, Greene said, "literally within a few seconds," it would wrap its powerful coils around a person's body, cutting off blood circulation to the brain, blocking off airways and preventing the chest from expanding. On Thursday, CBS reported villagers said Akbar was attacked from behind. The python stealthily lies in wait along a game trail, edges of waterways or any other place where they would find unsuspecting prey. A startled snake could bite as a form of defense 2. Pythons bite first and would attack a human in two ways: 1. Pythons often eat primates, including monkeys, sometimes orangutans and, seldom, people. The Guinness World Records notes a reticulated python named Medusa, which lives in Kansas City, Mo., holds the title as the world's largest snake ever in captivity at over 25-feet long. Humans, unfortunately, fit into the general, mammal-heavy diet of the reticulated python, which can grow between 20 and 25 feet long. There are, he said, examples of people being eaten by reticulated pythons, particularly on Sulawesi, the island where 25-year-old Akbar Salubiro was eaten. It's a rare occurrence for that part of the world, but not unheard of, Greene said. Such a nightmare occurred earlier this week, when a 23-foot reticulated python swallowed whole an Indonesian farmer. "It wouldn't take very long and it would be awful." "It would be extremely difficult for me to save my life without help," Greene said.
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