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Other Animal (But Non-Buggy) Crackers
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I'm Being Swallowed...
A few species of snake grow large enough to pose a threat to humans. Those most often implicated in human deaths are Burmese pythons and reticulated pythons; green anacondas and African rock pythons have also killed people, and the amethystine python is probably capable of the job as well, though there don't seem to be any recorded instances. Extensive research has failed to uncover any evidence of a boa constrictor killing anyone under any circumstances. A really large boa might be twelve or thirteen feet long---contrast this with the true giant snakes of the preceding paragraph, all of which can exceed twenty feet---and would be incapable of overpowering most humans, and certainly much too small to consider swallowing them (thus disinclined to constrict them; constriction is a means of securing food, not self-defense). Most recorded deaths are from captive snakes; while it is virtually certain that people have occasionally been killed by wild snakes in the Amazonian or Southeast Asian backcountry, such incidents have rarely if ever been documented. Several sets of pictures circulate on the internet, purporting to show a snake in the act of swallowing a person, or cut open to reveal the person it had swallowed, or simply with a large bulge that is claimed to represent a person. Many of these are obvious fakes; all are at least questionable, especially as they usually circulate with fabricated text (the species of snake is often misidentified, or the incidents described on an inappropriate continent, for instance). Cite: de Vosjoli, Philippe. In support of keeping boas and pythons. Vivarium 4.4 (1994?) |
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