Fossil of largest snake found in Colombia

BOGOTA, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- Fossilized remains of a 42-foot-long, 2,500-pound snake discovered in northeastern Colombia represent the biggest snake ever found, scientists say.
The researchers, led by Jason Head of the University of Toronto, estimate the snake, called Titanoboa cerrejonensis, lived 58 million to 60 million years ago, the BBC reported Wednesday.
By comparison, the heaviest snakes living today, the green anacondas, weigh only about 550 pounds and reticulated pythons can reach about 32 feet long.
The researchers used the mathematical relationship between the size of vertebrae and the length of the body in living snakes to project the size of the prehistoric serpent.
"At its greatest width, the snake would have come up to about your hips. The size is pretty amazing," said co-author P. David Polly of Indiana University in Bloomington, Ind.
The snake fossil was found at Cerrejon, one of the world's largest open-pit coal mines. It was related to today's boa constrictors.
"Probably like an anaconda, it spent a lot of time in the water," Polly said.
"It would have needed to eat a lot. What its prey was exactly, we don't know. But it probably included alligators, big fish or crocodiles."
The researchers' findings were reported in the Nature scientific journal.

Scorpion diet makes snakes more venomous

BANGOR, Wales, April 10 (UPI) -- Deadly saw-scaled vipers that feed on scorpions are far more dangerous than those that eat mammals and reptiles, a Welsh researcher says.

Axel Barlow of Bangor University began studying the snakes, one of the major killers in West Africa, to determine why anti-venom does not help some bite victims, the North Wales Chronicle reported. He found that the scorpion-eaters' venom is about 30 times as toxic as that of other saw-scaled vipers.

Barlow is collaborating on his research with the Venom Research Unit at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

"The West African governments continue to buy this anti-venom from India, but it doesn't work," Barlow said. "It's kind of intuitive that a snake's venom is going to be more toxic to the type of animals that they feed on."

Anti-venom is produced by injecting snake venom into horses, causing them to produce antibodies, and then harvesting their blood. To work, anti-venoms must be matched to the type of venom produced by the snake involved in the bite.

Snake diet find aids anti-venom

The research could help prevent people dying

New research by a Bangor university student has found that the diet of venomous snakes affects its venom strength.

Axel Barlow's discovery means that anti-venom can be developed specific to a certain snake's location or diet.

His studies into saw-scaled vipers, which have evolved to eat scorpions, found that they also had venom which was more lethal to scorpions.

Researchers hope the information will lead to fewer snake bite deaths.

The research was done as part of a final-year paper on saw-scaled vipers by Mr Barlow.

Anti-venom treatment

He said the significance of the discovery was that variation in venom composition between different species or populations of snakes can complicate anti-venom treatment.

This is particularly relevant in the case of saw-scaled vipers which are probably responsible for the majority of snakebite deaths in Africa, he said.

This was because west African hospitals still rely on imported anti-venom from Asia, where the saw-scaled vipers have a very different venom composition.

The saw-scaled vipers have evolved along with their diet

Axel Barlow added: "Saw-scaled vipers provide a good model to study venom variation as different species have extremely different diets.

"This allows us to investigate the effects of evolutionary changes in diet within a single group of related snake species."

Dr Wolfgang Wüster, an expert in snakes and snake venoms who lectures at Bangor added: "This study provides one of the most convincing pieces of evidence to date for the role of natural selection for diet in shaping snake venom composition.

"It is a key question in our understanding of venom evolution in snakes."

Python Swallows Pig

I received these pictures of a couple of zoo keepers feeding a rather large pig to this Snake. I don't know where they are from but it does show you that a snake this size can swallow a small human.

Man Eaten by Python

The pictures below allegedly document a recent incident of a snake eating a person. The accompanying stories vary as to victim (local child, camper, or oil rig crew member) and location (South America with the snake an anaconda, Borneo, and Singapore). The snake is a reticulated python.

The two pictures below obviously are of poorer quality and detail than the ones above. The pictures above also seem to have been in circulation several years before the ones below appeared. The lump appears to be of a stocky animal such as a pig rather than of a person. The person's body has very little mucus on it for having been inside a snake. Those who keep snakes well know how slimy food items get, especially when a snake regurgitates. It's difficult to ascertain where his arms are; one of them should be lying right along his side, since they would have to fold that way during the snake's feeding. His arms may be extending up into the snake to open a path for his head and chest. The upper torso appears to be within a bag inside the snake. The python's stomach and/or intestine also seem to have disappeared. Most experts suspect that these were staged photographs, though I have to give the man credit for crawling that far into the snake. In any event, no news service has ever carried a story relating to these photographs … and it would have made a great story. Some Internet sites with information on these pictures are:

The picture below was taken in Malaysia and printed in a local magazine there. The reticulated python could not completely eat the person. An adult human's shoulders present a real obstacle to the biggest snake. Whether the person already was dead or was killed by the snake remains unknown.

World Record Python

This was a picture I got out of the newspaper. It claimed the snake was a world record and the largest snake ever captured and held in captivity. Unfortunately I lost the clipping with the text that came with it. When I get around to cleaning my office, I'll scan the text in and add it to the picture.

I am not sure where the picture below came from. I do not know if it's the same snake but the pictures came out around the same time.

Giant Snakes in Old Newpapers

This scrub or amethystine python that ate an adult wallaby in Australia, sometimes turns up in the sensational press as a man-eater.

Picture published in Weekly World News on October 30, 1990. The story alleges that a 25-foot 380-pound anaconda ate a Japanese researcher in the Amazon. Since when do people wear pith helmets in the 90's? The snake itself is a reticulated python from Southeast Asia.

The same picture was modified and run a second time in the Weekly World News on January 8, 1991. This time the snake is a serial baby-eater! It has also shrunk from a HUGE 25 to a giant 13 feet. At least the location makes sense. The reticulated python occurs throughout Southeast Asia.

Two photographs submitted by Mr. A.J. "Mac" McBride of Colchester, England, to The Vivarium. He states that they were sepia postcards that a friend of his father had obtained. The second photograph reveals that the retic had eaten a deer.

All of these photos have been retouched to remove military insignia on the men's clothes. It's fairly well known that these were Japanese soldiers during World War II.