Snake wants to eat owner - urban myth or not?

Padjo1981

It's about the 5th time this story has done the rounds, csn't belive people have not heard it before now. It's total bull, no matter who says they know who it happened to. It always is a none ending friend of a friend of a friend.

li-evo7

True I have heard this story loads of times but part of it may be true. I know a lot of people that have snakes and I know a guy who travels to different countries to learn about them and he keeps loads of burmese pythons etc. Apparently snakes do have the intelligence to measure their prey. And they can starve themselves before they kill it. That is where the story comes from. Snakes can swallow people but it would have to be a very large snake. They crush a person until they break all of the bones and that is how they fit them inside themselves. It may be somewhat true of one person that this 'happened to' but not of all of them. Apparently the snake was coming out of its cage at night and stretching its body out to the length of the owner to measure the size and did this continually for a matter of days or weeks or watever and starved itself in the meantime.

SCI

What snakes could swallow an adult human,it's been proven large pythons can't get there jaws around our shoulders. Most if not all constrictors are ambush hunters and are opportunist feeder in the wild. They hit,roll,coil and then feed,there's no planing but I'd been keen to see any research you have on the matter.

kakee

I don't know about snakes eating humans but after watching this video I think its possible.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pahea7HoeYs

Jumpy

peasant wrote: »

It would have to be a very big snake to be even *contemplating* a human as prey.
And if I had that big a snake, capable of swallowing me hole, I certainly wouldn't share my bed with it

This comes 3 years too late buuut ...

It wouldnt have to be that big to swallow yer hole.

Satyr_The_Great

Pure Myth. The story originated in New York from what I know and spread world wide with the storyline changing slightly.
Basically, the snake was too big for its tank, and the girl could not afford a new bigger tank so she let the snake free roam at night.
Snakes are cold blooded animals / ecothermic.
This means that they can not produce their own body heat and need another source of heat to keep alive.
Snakes prefer dark spots or hides rather than being out in the open all the time.
Basically what the snake was doing, was hiding in a warm dark spot, using the girls body heat to keep itself alive. The vet that checked out the snake knew nothing about reptiles and so this led to the story being over exagerated and getting out of hand putting fear into parents of kids who kept reptiles.
Majority of snakes are not capable of swallowing humans. Yeah they dislocate their jaws and can open their mouths to 180 degrees BUT the shoulders are so wide that they could not go further than the head, AND even if the snake was big enough, it would have to be atleast 18 feet long or more before it could safely swallow a human without regurgitating the body.
The green anaconda is the exception which can reach 30 feet in length and up to 3 foot in gerth but them specimens are extremely rare.

Satyr_The_Great

li-evo7 wrote: »

True I have heard this story loads of times but part of it may be true. I know a lot of people that have snakes and I know a guy who travels to different countries to learn about them and he keeps loads of burmese pythons etc. Apparently snakes do have the intelligence to measure their prey. And they can starve themselves before they kill it. That is where the story comes from. Snakes can swallow people but it would have to be a very large snake. They crush a person until they break all of the bones and that is how they fit them inside themselves. It may be somewhat true of one person that this 'happened to' but not of all of them. Apparently the snake was coming out of its cage at night and stretching its body out to the length of the owner to measure the size and did this continually for a matter of days or weeks or watever and starved itself in the meantime.

Snakes do kill by crushing, BUT not like most people think. They dont kill by suffocation. They kill buy squeezing everytime you exhale BUT this is not to suffocate, it causes the vessels and arteries in your heart to burst from the pressure..this is how their prey dies...this is only recently discovered in the last few years.

Beekay

Satyr_The_Great wrote: »

Snakes do kill by crushing, BUT not like most people think. They dont kill by suffocation. They kill buy squeezing everytime you exhale BUT this is not to suffocate, it causes the vessels and arteries in your heart to burst from the pressure..this is how their prey dies...this is only recently discovered in the last few years.

Really? Thats really interesting, any links? Always thought it was suffocation that the prey died from since I did a project on snakes in 6th class

Macker1

Newsflash the Snake had already been seen in the vincinity of the grassy knoll a few years back.