The longest species of snakes that slither the planet

Friday, July 24, 2020 - 15:10 in Paleontology & Archaeology

This story originally featured on Field & Stream.Pretty much all of the really impressive “biggest snakes in the world”—the 50-footers and up—live online or in Hollywood. (Many of the latter starred in the 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger breakthrough hit Conan the Barbarian and are retired now.) But even in the real world, a handful of snake species can grow to immense proportions. The longest of them, pythons, can stretch well beyond the length of George Washington’s 21-foot nose on Mount Rushmore, and there is anecdotal evidence of some specimens reaching 33 feet, or nearly as long as a telephone pole. In 2017, the body of a palm fruit farmer in Indonesia was found inside a 23-foot-long python. Villagers became suspicious when they found the snake “slithering awkwardly” near where the farmer’s boot was found. There was also the man-sized bulge in the snake’s body.What follows isn’t a strict rundown of the...

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