Horrifying news about pythons emerges one after another. News about pythons eating people has been reported in many places. Unfortunately, many such news are actually spreading rumors to .
Although pythons are huge, they also have their own prey preferences. Creatures as big as humans are not the first choice for pythons.
For a python, swallowing such a large amount of food will make it difficult to move , but it will easily put itself in a dangerous situation .
Since there are so few cases of pythons eating humans, some crazy scientists even experimented on themselves in order to simulate the scenario of pythons preying on humans.
The pythons we often refer to generally refer to members of the Serpentine suborder Boa family , which are divided into Boa subfamily and Anacondae . The representative species are Reticulated python and Green water anaconda .
One of them is the longest snake in the world , and the other is the heaviest snake on the earth .
Among them, the reticulated python has clear records of attacking and devouring people, while the green water anaconda has no records at all.
Pythons are all non-venomous snakes . They require excellent physical fitness to hunt, that is, bite, entangle, and swallow, forming a "three-piece suit" in one go.
First, locks on the prey , approaches quietly without making any noise, and bites the prey when it is unprepared.
then wraps the prey with its own body , and constantly uses its muscles to contract inward, squeezing the prey's body, causing the prey's internal organs to rupture .
finally swallows , the prey that has lost the ability to fight back.
The skulls of snakes are very special. They can dislocate their lower jaws and open their mouths to the diameter of their prey.
Therefore, many people misunderstand the habits of pythons and think that pythons eat very large foods.
In fact, this is not the case. Some scientists have calculated the food size of two large pythons, the reticulated python and the green water anaconda, and found that they prefer prey of about 18 kilograms.
An adult female weighs more than 45 kilograms, and an adult male is larger. If the python must eat adults, then it itself will face a great risk .
For example, in the reticulated python's cannibalism case , it swallowed an adult man, but because the devouring time was too long, it was discovered and was eventually beaten to death.
It can be seen that pythons are not invincible . The python that swallows its prey is exactly when is most vulnerable
because the larger the prey means the python needs to spend more time . Moreover, after a python swallows such a large prey, once it encounters danger, its moves very slowly and is easily attacked.
When a python encounters danger, it will vomit out the food in its belly. The larger the food, the slower it vomits, and the smaller its chance of escape.
Therefore, no matter what the reason is, python will not take the initiative to provoke human , and will not take the initiative to eat human .
Of course, if humans insist on intruding into the territory of pythons, they will still be counterattacked by pythons.
Because pythons rarely attack people, scientists don't know how people will react when entangled by pythons. Therefore, a scientist named Paul Rossoli decided to use himself as the experimental target.
Paul first found a green anaconda with a body length of 27.6 meters . It was covered with hard muscles . The thickest part of its body was almost a human waist.
Just in case, Paul put on a special "armor" - carbon fiber protective suit , which can protect the organs in the body when the python wraps around him.
When the experiment began, Paul deliberately angered the green anaconda and let it wrap around him. Soon, the angry green anaconda wrapped Paul from head to toe .
During the first 5 seconds of the entanglement, Paul could still talk to the doctor and assistant.
At the 6th second, Paul could hear the sound of the armor deforming.
At the 7th second, Paul felt the pressure, which meant that the armor had been pressed against his body by the green anaconda.
Starting from the 8th second, the armor had no effect. Paul felt pressure and felt pain in his body.
10 seconds later, Paul was speechless and became increasingly uncomfortable and unable to breathe normally.
The heart rate monitor next to him showed that Paul's heartbeat was rising in a straight line. When 's heartbeat soared to 180, the doctor suggested stopping the experiment immediately, otherwise his life would be in danger.
The experiment was immediately stopped. The rescued Paul was pale, breathing rapidly , and his limbs could not move normally at all.
After he recovered, Paul began to talk about the feeling of being entangled by a python.
Paul said that at first he felt a force pushing the whole person inward to , and its arms were almost broken. After
, when the body's contraction reaches the limit, it can clearly feel that the ribs are being crushed .
After that, he showed signs of difficulty breathing, and then his head began to feel dizzy, especially his eyes, which felt like they were about to burst.
Paul also said that the green anaconda is very smart. Every time he takes a breath, the green anaconda shrinks once, taking advantage of this gap, so it becomes more uncomfortable as it goes to the back.
Paul admitted that without this armor, he might not be able to survive in the 10th second.
Paul put the experimental process on the TV station. This experiment also solved people's long-standing doubts, that is, if people have weapons in their hands, can they kill pythons?
Many people think that pythons are slow to move. If humans are unfortunate in the wild, If you encounter a problem, if you have a weapon in your hand, you can use to kill the python . This statement has also been supported by many people.
Is this really the case?
According to Paul's experiments, the weight of this green anaconda is more than 200 kilograms , exceeding Paul himself.
and although it moves slowly, it has the extremely explosive power of at the moment of entanglement .
The entanglement of the green anaconda immobilized the whole person, making it impossible for his hands to move. Even if he was carrying a weapon, he couldn't make room to take action.
And Paul was still wearing protective clothing, so he could persist for so long.
Ordinary people without any protection can only last about 10 seconds if they fight against the entanglement of a python with their physical body.
Before Paulās experiment, scientists had used the ballistic dummy to conduct a python winding simulation.
The ballistic dummy is a relatively realistic prop, with simulating human internal organs and bones inside.
Experimental data shows that without wearing any protection, human ribs will break and internal organs will be damaged and bleed when entangled by giant snakes such as anacondas.
The entanglement of the python will also isolate the blood circulation , resulting in human body being deprived of oxygen , brain congestion , eyeballs bursting and other serious injuries.
This kind of damage is irreversible. Even if the python is killed and pulled away later, the person may have died.
Someone asked if could pretend to be dead , so that the snake would not continue to entangle and take advantage of this gap to escape.
Paul uses practical experience to tell everyone that this method does not work, because pythons can feel whether their prey is dead .
Most snakes' eyes don't work well, so they rely on tongues to feel changes in their surroundings.
Living things are surrounded by various chemical molecules , from which snakes can obtain the information they want.
For example, the odor molecules emitted by a living person and a dead person are different. You may think that your skill of pretending to be dead is perfect, but in fact, it will not work at all in front of a snake.
Pretending to be dead usually fools visual animals , but it cannot fool animals like snakes that rely on chemical information .
Therefore, it is difficult for pythons such as adult reticulated pythons and green water anacondas to survive after entangling people.
But donāt be too afraid. Pythons are scary, and they mainly live in dense forests far away from human habitation.
The probability of ordinary people encountering a python is very small. Even if they encounter it, the snake will most likely be the first one to run away.
The character of a python is actually not as ferocious as it looks. For example, the Burmese python has even been domesticated as a pet.
Generally speaking, pythons do not like to conflict with other animals . The size of a human is very huge in the eyes of pythons, so it will actively avoid encounters with humans.
Compared with snakes such as , cobras, , and cauliflower snakes, which have bad tempers and have a relatively large distribution range, pythons are considered a relatively "good" family of snakes.
However, with the intensification of human activities, the habitat of pythons has been destroyed, resulting in more and more encounters between humans and pythons, and the number of sightings of pythons is also on the rise.
In addition, because some types of pythons are used as pets, they cannot cultivate feelings.
As a result, pet pythons escaped into the wild, causing invasive species. For example, Florida, in the United States, suffered a lot of losses due to the proliferation of exotic Burmese pythons.
In short, the situation of the python family is not very good now. Paul did this experiment to let people know the power of pythons, and on the other hand, he also wanted to call everyone's attention to the plight of pythons.
