Pet snake measures up

Have you heard this urban legend?

There was a couple who had a python and had raised it from a baby. The snake grew and grew and when it was larger, it all of the sudden stopped eating. The only thing the snake would do is to crawl up on their bed and lay next to them. The finally took the snake to a herpetologist to see what the problem was because they loved the snake as a pet. The couple told the herpetologist that it stopped eating and about it getting up on the bed with them and wanting to snuggle. The herpetologist immediately advised them to have the snake put down. They were aghast and asked why. The herpetologist told them the snake had grown large enough that it was laying beside them to size them up. It was using it's body to see if they would fit inside. The couple had the snake euthanized immediately!



 

Myrddin

Well-Known Member
I have heard something eerily similar. In fact, my sister told me a story that a friend of hers had a pet snake who nightly took it out of its cage to let it sleep on the bed with her, and after a while it stopped eating. Growing concerned she took it to the vet. When she explained that it slept on her bed, the vet told her to stop and just keep it in its cage, explaining that, to the snake, all it sees is a big hunk of meat. He explained that the snake was starving itself so that, eventually it would have the room to eat her. Needles to say, she immediately took the vets advice and just it in its cage from then on.
 

Nadai

Active Member
That's a scary thought; I've never known a person to let their pet snake sleep with them!
Did you know that, while it is possible for a snake to kill a full grown man, it is impossible for a snake to actually eat a full grown man. There are several cases all over the world of people walking through jungles being killed by snakes, but snakes can't actually swallow people. There are snakes like the anaconda or python that grow to be over 20feet and have the ability to swallow 7 foot crocodiles or a 5500lb hippo, but their jaws do not extend far enough to accomodate the width of a human's broad shoulders...




Images like these are all a hoax; different pictures put together to seem like real cases of people being swallowed by snakes. Note that there are no videos of snakes regergitating humans like there are of snakes regergitating hippos and other giant animals. You'll see that the patterns of the "snake's" skin around the man in the last image are entirely different than in the other images.
There have been cases of humans being found in the prossess of being swallowed by these giant snakes, but most times the snake has died trying to get the human down, tearing its jaws or suffocating, or the snak will try repeatedly swalling the human partially then spitting it out.
A small human, a child, can be swallowed, but a full grown human, it's impossible.
 
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