#FAT AND AMBUSH PREDATORS MOVIE#

Once they’ve constricted their prey, their incredible jaw – which in a quirk of evolution features bones that are found in our inner ear – comes into play. Reticulated pythons are one of few snakes that grow big enough to be able to swallow a human. “They’re holding on and slowly with each breath they hold tighter and tighter, so its asphyxiation that kills the prey.” A fit, strong person might be able to fight it off, but not if the python’s first strike was effective enough to establish an unbreakable hold. “They strike their prey to grab hold of it, then very quickly wrap loops around the body to hold onto that prey,” Dr Herbert says. They are non-venomous, yet contrary to the two-fanged caricature they have many teeth – two rows at the top and one and the bottom. Pythons can strike defensively – to lacerate and frighten danger away – or with a grab-and-hold when they intend to eat whatever they strike. While the victim had a back wound that could have been caused by a bite, Dr Herbert wonders if some separate misfortune may have befallen him before the python came across what it would have seen as “a large, tasty morsel that will do me for quite a while”. In general they feast at ground level, being too heavy to reach into trees. Why a cat's whiskers are the bee's kneesĭr Herbert says they are “ambush predators … not hunters” they lie in wait for their meal, and in South East Asia dine on anything from rodents to deer and myriad mammals in between. In this case we’re talking an eight-metre long reticulated python that could weigh well in excess of 100 kilograms, depending on its fat storage (which in pythons can be very large).

Anywhere that you have a predator that’s big enough, you have the potential for humans to be their prey.” “There’re fewer and fewer of these poor animals because we have encroached further and further into their habitat. Dr Herbert, who worked in zoos for a decade including six years in Singapore, notes that the continuing creep of humans into the habitat of wild animals is an open invitation for such encounters. In short the why, and particularly the how. Setting aside the grisly YouTube footage, there’s fascination aplenty in the science of this tragedy. This specimen in captivity is eating a chicken. This isn’t anything special or unusual for an animal to do, it was just taking an opportunity.” Reticulated pythons are the world’s longest snakes and one of the heaviest. But it’s equally awful for the antelope to be eaten by the lion. “It’s awful for that person and the people around him. While snakes eating humans is rare, Dr Herbert says it’s also merely an extreme example of nature at work.

#FAT AND AMBUSH PREDATORS MOVIE#

Images that can’t be unseen – including a six-minute video of the snake being sliced open to unveil a fully-clothed, very dead human in its stomach – fuel the horror movie hysteria.ĭr Sasha Herbert, who runs the exotic pet unit at the University of Melbourne’s U-Vet Werribee, sees beyond the macabre in the demise of a 25-year-old Sulawesi palm oil plantation worker. The news that a man was swallowed whole by a snake on an Indonesian island leaves more than an uncomfortable lump in the throat.

Fat and ambush predators