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Warning: This article contains graphic video footage
A woman has been swallowed whole by a 7-meter long (23-foot long) python in a village in central Indonesia.
The body of Wa Tiba, 54, was discovered inside the Reticulated python near her village on the island of Muna, The Jakarta Post reports. She went missing on Thursday evening after leaving her house to check on a nearby vegetable field. After not returning home the following morning, her family and over a 100 people from the village launched a search party.
By around 9:00 AM that same morning, a trail of her belongings led the villagers to a bloated python, which they promptly killed and carried back to the village. Assuming the worst, they decided to slice open the python’s belly.
“When they cut open the snake’s belly they found Tiba’s body still intact with all her clothes,” Faris, a village chief, told reporters according to The Associated Press.
“She was swallowed first from her head.”
Wa Tiba received a burial ceremony later that afternoon in keeping with local religious customs.
Although not typically considered a threat to humans, reticulated pythons (Python reticulatus) are not to be messed with, as this story tragically highlights. Native to southeast Asia, these non-venomous reptiles usually live on a diet of monkeys, pigs, rats, and other small mammals. They are ambush predators that hunt by calmly waiting for hours upon hours until some unsuspecting prey wanders past. Then they strike, and begin coiling around and constricting their prey, causing it to eventually suffocate or go into cardiac arrest.
So no, you couldn't be swallowed whole and survive, you would be killed first then swallowed.
Reticulated pythons are the longest of all snakes and the third heaviest, only trumped by the Green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) of South America and the Burmese python (Python bivittatus). The longest reported reticulated python was said to be 10 meters (33 feet), although some scientists have said this claim might be overstated. One of the longest officially recorded individuals was a captive female called Samantha who measured 7.9 meters (26 feet) from nose to tail.
Cases such as this recent incident in Indonesia are rare, but certainly not unheard of. Just last year, a similar incident happened in central Indonesia where the body of a 25-year-old palm oil harvester was found in the digestive tract of a reticulated python (if you have the stomach for it, the gruesome moment they opened up the snake and found him can be seen here).
Or, you know, watch this.
