Zoo's monster python could be off the scale for size
By Tim Moore / The Times of London
Coil slowly unravelling over heavy coil, a reticulated python named Fragrant Flower moved menacingly around its new home Monday in a tiny Indonesian zoo.
If the snake were to stretch out, officials say that it would be 14.85 metres - half as long again as a double-decker bus - and would be the longest snake in captivity.
"If the length of the snake is confirmed, then it would be 50 per cent larger than any other snake known to science," said Richard Gibson, curator of herpetology at London Zoo.
The snake, which is said to weigh 447 kilograms, was purchased from a man who caught it in a forest in Sumatra last year. It was brought to the zoo in the village of Curug Sewu.
"The largest snake that I have ever handled was around four metres," Gibson said. "Anything over three metres is getting too much for one person to handle. It would take eight or 10 men to subdue a snake this size."
It is a rule of thumb among snake-catchers that reticulated pythons more than 7.6 metres can open their jaws wider than the width of human shoulders - the necessary width to eat a man whole.
Fragrant Flower breaks the record for the longest snake, which has stood for 91 years, held by a reticulated python of 9.98 metres that was shot in Celebes (now Sulawesi), Indonesia. The heaviest snake previously recorded was a female anaconda, which was shot in Brazil in 1960 and estimated to weigh about 227 kilograms.
If Fragrant Flower is longer than 30 feet (9.1 metres) then its hunters could qualify for a $50,000 US prize, instituted by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.
Robert Twigger, who wrote about his two attempts to win the prize in his book Big Snake, was suspicious about Fragrant Flower.
"Really long snakes look twice their length. Ask someone how long a three-metre snake is and they will say six metres. They just seem bigger psychologically."
Local newspapers said that Fragrant Flower eats three or four dogs a month. Samantha, a 7.9-metre python at the Bronx zoo and the previous holder of the longest snake in captivity title, used to be fed one 11- to 15-kilogram pig each month, dead but served warm. Samantha took 15 minutes to swallow the pig, and a week to digest it.