I’m not a professional herpetologist, but I have taken care of large collections of snakes. Pit vipers like rattlesnakes will often strike and envenomate their prey and then just chill for a while before eating. With constrictors, the bite, encircle, kill and swallow are almost always a continuous process.
tellyworth - thanks for the link. I hadn’t realized the case was decided. Thirty years after the incident, you get distracted from following…
I can only speculate at this point, but possibly the snake killed one child, realized it wasn’t the prey that it had smelled, then went after the other one. I’m still not surprised, snakes, like other animals are almost as unpredictable as humans. If we can accept mass killings and John McCain choosing Sarah Palin as a running mate I don’t see anything all that surprising about a snake killing two kids.
No, there wouldn’t be any residue, unless it was something the snake picked up from its cage or the ventilation system.
An autopsy ought to make it clear whether a snake killed the kids, though. Besides bite marks, the style of killing is distinctive. A snake will constrict the chest (heck, the whole torso, usually) and not the neck. A snake that size is too thick to even get around a child’s neck. I’m not sure if a person is capable of the kind of bear hug that might look like a snake kill.
And my opinion on the original question: While it is absolutely possible for this to happen as a snake attack, it’s unusual enough to deserve significant investigation to rule out other possibilities. Even if they confirmed the snake killed the boys, I’d want investigators to see if the snake owner had any possible motive to kill them.
Not much news without details. That’s how constrictors kill. Humans can do it to. But there should be evidence of the snake doing it. I assume there would be bruises all over a body if it was constricted to death, possibly broken ribs too.
Please don’t hone your political ax in an MPSIMS thread.
Thanks,
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
A grown man can easily asphyxiate a child by simply sitting on the child’s chest. So, yeah, more information needed.
Too soon?
I could believe - hypothetically - that the snake didn’t escape and that a negligent adult let the kids play with it. I can’t believe a man could kill two kids and make it look like a snake did it. Also: the story in the OP now says this is not the first time the snake escaped from its enclosure this way.
It seems that constriction via snake would result in pressure from a variety of angles at once.
It also seems that the signs of this on the victim’s body would be hard to duplicate.
It doesn’t seem that merely bear hugging or sitting on someone would generate the same type of bruising and fracturing that I imagine would go along with being crushed to death by such a snake.
Marley, I also don’t believe it is possible for a man to kill two kids and actually make it look like a python did it. But, given some of the amazingly stupid things I’ve seen done in the pursuit of criminality, I’m not convinced that some idiot couldn’t be stupid enough to try.
Still, I retain my doubts about the snake scenario for all of the reasons offered upthread. The bodies should have at least one major bite mark, from the initial bite even if the snake didn’t attempt to swallow them. That first bite, featuring upwards of a hundred pointy sharp teeth up to 3/8 or even ½ inch long, will definitely leave a characteristic mark. Also clearly distinctive and definitive would be the damage caused by constriction. There should be internal and external bruising, probable organ damage, pulmonary edema, and possible broken bones. It should be easy to determine if the snake caused the fatalities. Even gross examination at the scene should have provided sufficient evidence for a provisional determination. So something just doesn’t ring true, or much isn’t being reported. I await a full autopsy report, including a toxicology screening.
That’s true, but I don’t think the police would play along. The stories suggest they think the snake thing is at least plausible.
I intend no implication of police collusion. But police – these were RCMP, weren’t they? – might not know very much about snakes and their mode of killing. Especially giant subtropical snakes. And if they – the police – have been watching TV and seen some of the scary nonsense being tossed around about pythons in general, and African Rock Pythons in particular, they might well be somewhat predisposed to believe the snake capable of almost anything.
So – snake plausible = yes for rather stretchy values of plausible.
No, of course not. My point is that the police and forensic specialists would be able to figure it out quickly and if they had any doubts about the snake story, they would not be corroborating that story.
The boys were found dead Monday morning. It wouldn’t take investigators very long to see if the bodies had injuries consistent with strangling or crushing by a person or to consult with a herpetologist and ask if it looked like a python had done it. If they felt these injuries were consistent with murder, the news stories would almost certainly have more equivocal comments by the police. The story linked to in the OP says “Police said they believe the 45-kg snake entered the ventilation system through a vent above its enclosure, which reached nearly to the ceiling of Savoie’s apartment. A pipe broke, and the snake fell into the living room where the boys were sleeping on a mattress.” If the police thought the man might have done it, they would probably say something more like “According to police, the owner of the pet shop says the boys were killed by an African rock python that escaped from its enclosure and got into the ventilation system.”
This was my feeling. The guy was negligent, the kids died and he thought “oh shit, I need to tell them the snake escaped.” However, even if it’s all as has been stated and the snake has escaped before that still makes the snake owner negligent.
Right.
From here(via Google translate) :
So it seems like the python didn’t escape from the shop and take an improbable route through the vents, but was a house pet.
It didn’t escape from the pet shop, no. It was in the apartment and went from one room to another through the vent.
We have very little information so far. We don’t know that there are no bite marks, or much of anything else.