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The anaconda lives in Central and tropical South America. It is a member of the Boa family of snakes and is dark green in color with round markings. It is sometimes referred to as the "water boa." Because the anaconda's weight is usually supported by liquid, it can grow larger than snakes that make their homes in trees. The water-based anaconda often winds up drowning its victims as they are pulled into the water rather than suffocating them by constriction. Snakes swallow their victims whole. Although it is often said a snake's jaw can be unhinged from the skull to allow something much larger than the snake's girth to be swallowed, the jaws are actually connected by a ligament that stretches. Once the carcass is inside the snake it must be digested quickly before it rots in the serpent's gut. If a snake cannot digest his prey before bacteria does, the snake will be forced to regurgitate it. If he cannot spit it out, the snake may die of food poisoning. The large anacondas feed on deer, pigs, caiman (a creature that looks like a small crocodile), and fish. The snake usually wraps his extended jaws around the head of the victim and swallows working its way down to the victim's feet. This allows the unfortunate animal's limbs to neatly fold inward rather than present an obstacle to ingestion.
Although the anaconda is generally considered the largest snake, some people list a reticulated python (Python reticulated) killed in Celebes, Indonesia in 1912 as the largest single specimen. It was 32 feet 10 inches long. Some people do not accept the 37 1/2 ft. Colombian anaconda because after shooting the snake and measuring it, the expedition went off and ate lunch before attempting to photograph and skin it. While they were gone, the snake, (apparently still alive) crawled or swam away. Even if you disqualify the Colombian anaconda, another 34 ft. long specimen, shot in British Guiana by Vincent Roth, a reputable scientist, would still be longer than the Celebes python.
The Anaconda is also foot per foot a much bigger snake than the Python, being both heavier and wider in girth. This is probably because the anaconda, a water snake, does not have to be concerned about getting its body up a tree like the python does. For these reasons the museum reports the anaconda as the largest snake, though on the average some Pythons grow longer. Do large snakes like the python and the anaconda eat people? Occasionally such attacks are recorded in the wild. In 1972 a python in Burma ate an eight-year-old boy. In 1927 there was the story about a jeweler called Maung Chit Chine. He hid under a tree during a rain storm and afterward his friends could only find his hat and shoes. When they killed a nearby gouged Python, they found the rest of Chines' body, swallowed feet first (though this seems opposite to normal snake behavior) and whole, inside the snake. Strangely enough, many big snakes attack humans not in the jungle, but in suburbia. Pythons are often kept as pets, but can turn deadly without warning. In 1993 in Colorado, a 15-year-old boy weighing 95 pounds was attacked by the family's python. The snake was only of medium size being 11 feet long and weighing 53 pounds, yet was able to kill the boy, though it made no attempt to eat him. Cartoonist Gary Larson, of The Far Side, also had a close call with a Burmese python he had raised from a baby. According to Larson he realized he was "living with a gigantic predator with a very small brain" one day when it tried to do him in. Large snakes, though beautiful and interesting, can be dangerous. And they don't have to live in the jungle to kill.
Copyright Lee Krystek 1996-1999. All Rights Reserved
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