THE WORLD'S BIGGEST SNAKE

CLICK HERE FOR THE 'GARDEN OF EADEN’ SEED SHOP

Love them or loath them, snakes have been an endless source of fascination for as long as mankind has existed - but what exactly are they? Well, snakes are elongate, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes. However they can be confused by similar looking legless lizards, but luckily are further distinguished by their lack of eyelids and external ears.

As interesting as that is, most people are interested in how big they get. So, just how big is the largest snake in the world?

The Giant Green Anaconda

The world’s largest snake is also the world’s biggest snake but not necessary the world’s longest snake. The world’s largest snake is the Giant Green anaconda, and is found in Amazon rain forest of South America.

The anaconda is of a subfamily of non-venomous boas found in Central, South America, Africa and Southeast Asia. They can grow as long as 8 metres long, as wide as a fully grown man and can weigh as much as 250 kilogrammes.

The green anaconda is usually an olive green snake with black spots along the body. Like any other snake, the head is narrow with eyes set high on the head.

How does the Giant Green Anaconda mate?

During mating, several males are known to wrap themselves around one female in an attempt to mate. referred to as "breeding balls," in which up to 12 males wrap around the same female and attempt to copulate. The group could stay in this position from 2–4 weeks. Nature sees to it that the fittest male - usually the strongest and largest male - should win and therefore have the privilege of mating with the female. But since females are far stronger they can sometimes be biased to this law of nature and decide on herself which male to mate with regardless of the size and strength of the male. Mating is followed by a gestation period that lasts approximately 6–7 months. The species is ovoviviparous, with females giving birth to live young. Litters usually consists of 20–40 offspring, although as many as 100 may be produced. After giving birth, females may lose up to half their weight.

Can Anacondas Swim?

Unfortunately for most of its prey, the Giant Green Anaconda is a great swimmer and will comfortably work on its prey when in water. It is also capable of finding its prey on land but is rather slow and sluggish out of the water.

What does the Giant Green Anaconda eat?

The diet of an anaconda will consist mainly of fish, birds, and small mammals like deer, antelopes, rabbit, jaguars, and snakes, reptiles, or anything smaller than itself. After breeding, a female anaconda can sometimes feed on its male counterpart.

Is the Anaconda Venomous?

Luckily for you the anaconda is not venomous but that doesn't mean it won't kill you and feed on you. It manages this by coiling itself around you, and then by using massively powerful constrictions, will squeeze you preventing breathing and raising your body’s blood pressure two to three times its normal rate. These constrictions will continue to increase until your death, most likely caused by a heart attack, or suffocation!

What was the world's largest snake?

According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest ever captured snake was 32 feet long, while the heaviest — a Burmese Python kept in Gurnee - weighs in at an impressive 402 pounds. However, earlier this year, Indonesian villagers claim to have captured a python that is almost 49 feet long and weighing nearly 990 pounds. If confirmed, this would be the largest snake ever kept in captivity.

While these figure are hard to imagine, they pale into insignificance when you compare then to the largest snake that has ever lived - the titanoboa!

Slithering in at 48 feet long and weighing an estimated one-and-a-half tons, the largest snake the world has ever seen is the recently discovered Titanoboa.

Sixty million years ago, in the mysterious era after the mass extinction of the dinosaurs, scientists believe that a colossal snake related to modern boa constrictors ruled a lost world.

The startling discovery of Titanoboa was made by a team of scientists working in one of the world’s largest open-pit coal mines at Cerrejon in La Guajira, Colombia. It is a snake that dwarfs the largest anaconda found today, and it has the size and character to challenge T-Rex in the public’s imagination.

The story behind this significant scientific revelation began in 2002, when a Colombian student visiting the coal mine made an intriguing discovery: a fossilized leaf that hinted at an ancient rainforest from the Paleocene epoch. Over the following decade, collecting expeditions led by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida opened a unique window into perhaps the first rainforest on Earth. Fossil finds included giant turtles and crocodiles, as well as the first known bean plants and some of the earliest banana, avocado and chocolate plants. But their most spectacular discovery was the fossilized vertebrae of a previously undiscovered species of snake, one so large it defied imagination.

Together with their research teams, Jonathan Bloch of the Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida and Carlos Jaramillo of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, joined forces with one of the world’s foremost experts in ancient snakes, Jason Head of the University of Nebraska, to unlock the mysteries of this ancient time and discover exactly how Titanoboa appeared, lived and hunted.

Latest Images

Trending Articles

Latest Images