I’m watching a documentary on ancient snakes and my aunts spinning weekly world. News type of stories about pythons and such eating people
Any truth to her yarns?
Documented case (victim was grown male) just a couple weeks ago.
I’ve never understood the insistence in some quarters that snakes can’t eat people. It’s been well-known for a long time that a large-enough snake can eat deer, which in certain ways are bigger than some people.
I’m guessing the OP doesn’t keep up with current events. Just happened recently and documented on youtube.
The problem is not so much the size as the shape. Snakes have to disengage their jaws to engulf large prey. They normally start from the head. In most animals the body tapers fairly smoothly from the head, so the snake can gradually expand its gape. But in humans the body becomes suddenly broader at the shoulders, and the snake can’t get its jaws past them. Big snakes can easily kill humans, they just have trouble eating them. A snake may get as far as the shoulders and then give up, disgorging the head.
The recent video is the first clear documentation I have seen of a snake actually ingesting an adult human. Other supposed photos posted on the internet have been hoaxes. I’d be interested to know just how large the victim was.
There are various reports of pythons consuming humans in Africa and Asia. However, many of the victims were women, adolescents, or children, and thus relatively small. They generally also lack supporting evidence such as photos.
While big snakes are capable of consuming humans given the right circumstances, the number of such cases is extremely small.
I guess the snake world is growing some overachievers these days.
Both at about 23’, with relatively small victims. (And the dear they are reported to eat are small dear too.)
I suspect that “size at which they start to eat humans” puts an upper limit on the size of snakes in the modern world.