I receive a chain email at work a few minutes ago with a series of pictures that look pretty realistic. Entitled “Don’f fall a sleep (sic) in the jungle!”, the 8 pictures show a python with a large bulge in its stomach being crated, displayed, and then finally opened with a man inside.
Realizing that chain mails are poor evidence, I did a quick search here and on snopes. Snopes had a disproven fake article about a boy being swallowed, but their pictures and mine dont match. I thought for sure the SD would have it, since I clearly remember reading about this somewhere and the author talked about how hard it would be for the snake not to choke around a man’s shoulders. But nothing on SD and even still, the pictures are pretty convincing.
Is this email true? No cite, no location, no date, but damn those are some good pictures
In this film, at 11:00 mins in, Austin Stevens says that a 20 foot+ reticulated python could swallow a man whole, no problem at all. He finds the big snake at about 32 mins.
If you do a YouTube search on (TMI warning) “snake swallowed hippo” you’ll see rather alarming video of a huge constrictor that actually did devour a hippo (quite a small one, but certainly as large as a human).
The problem with a snake swallowing an adult human is not so much the size but the shape. Snakes almost invariably start swallowing at the head end. Human shoulders present an almost insurmountable barrier to continued swallowing. Pigs, deer, and other animals that taper at the head end are much easier to swallow.
I am not aware of any authenticated cases of a snake, no matter how large, having swallowed an adult human being.
PS. I wouldn’t consider someone like Austin Stevens an authority. He’s in show business and no doubt has an interest in telling a good story.
I watched a program on the History Channel the other day that said it may be possible, but that there were no confirmed cases. They basically echoed Xema and Colibri’s posts.
I saw a wildlife biologist speculating on what happened on this. He said that it’s possible for a snake to swallow something that’s so big that it can actually start decomposing inside the snake’s body before it has been digested. The decomp causes a buildup of gasses internally, and in this case, so he speculated, actually ruptured the snake’s body.
The picture worked for me, but I don’t find it to be convincing. All I see is a person lying on what may be a rock python or a reticulated python which has been cut open. The photo doesn’t show that the person was actually inside the snake.
Same here. There have been previous hoax photos in which a person has apparently posed within a cut-open snake. Without a date, location, or name of the purported victim the photo proves nothing.
