Saddest Video: Teenager killed mercilessly by a python.

Death comes quickly, notes Cornell Professor Dr. Harry W. Greene. The reticulated python, the longest living species of snake in the world, are constrictors, meaning they coil around their prey and squeeze them until they’re dead in just a couple minutes. The swallowing takes most of the time.



“It would be extremely difficult for me to save my life without help,” Greene said. “It wouldn’t take very long and it would be awful.”

Such a nightmare occurred earlier this week, when a 23-foot reticulated python swallowed whole an Indonesian farmer. It’s a rare occurrence for that part of the world, but not unheard of, Greene said. There are, he said, examples of people being eaten by reticulated pythons, particularly on Sulawesi, the island where 25-year-old Akbar Salubiro was eaten.

Humans, unfortunately, fit into the general, mammal-heavy diet of the reticulated python, which can grow between 20 and 25 feet long. The Guinness World Records notes a reticulated python named Medusa, which lives in Kansas City, Mo., holds the title as the world’s largest snake ever in captivity at over 25-feet long. Pythons often eat primates, including monkeys, sometimes orangutans and, seldom, people.



Pythons bite first and would attack a human in two ways: 1. A startled snake could bite as a form of defense; 2. The python stealthily lies in wait along a game trail, edges of waterways or any other place where they would find unsuspecting prey. On Thursday, CBS reported villagers said Akbar was attacked from behind.

Reticulated pythons bite first. Then, Greene said, “literally within a few seconds,” it would wrap its powerful coils around a person’s body, cutting off blood circulation to the brain, blocking off airways and preventing the chest from expanding. From one or all of those reasons, he said, a person would quickly die.

“Big pythons are incredibly powerful animals with huge muscles to both move and eat and constrict,” said Stephen Ressel, a professor at the College of Atlantic. “They certainly can pack a huge force as they’re constricting.”

Then comes the swallowing. Pythons can swallow humans because their lower jaw is indirectly attached to their skull, allowing it to expand. Also, a python’s lower jaw comes apart, allowing it to further open up. Over the course of about an hour, Greene estimates, the snake would walk its teeth over a person’s body until it is completely inside the animal’s stomach.

A person’s body would be digested by the snake’s stomach acid, Greene said.

Akbar’s death, noted Greene, isn’t the first one. In a study he did with Thomas N. Headland, Greene found reticulated pythons killed at least six Filipino hunter-gatherers from 1934 to 1973. Once, a python went into a thatched house, killed two children and was swallowing one of them when the father came home and killed the snake with a bolo knife.