As I plow through the innumerable websites & URLs, I am becoming increasingly suspicious & skeptical of the initially reported specifications of this snake. More & better photographs are reinforcing this opinion. This is obviously one heck of a big snake, but comparison with scalable objects in the photos raise some doubts (for myself, at least) as to its true size. Some of the news accounts suffer from translation / transliteration, or other errors, just to add to the confusion.
As the keeper of the gigantic male reticulated python, "Little Snooky", I am being inundated with e-mails & forwards. From appearances in the photographs that I have seen thus far, "Fragrant Flower" is a female & is (maybe) larger than "Little Snooky".
Whoever named this snake "Fragrant Flower" must have just caught a whiff of some fresh snake poop & understands the true translation of Hong Kong as Fragrant Harbor.
If it will go, I'll put a C-n-P of some of my commentary below this note. This box looks like plain-text-only, so some stuff may not show up as I had originally done it.
I was ambushed as soon as I came in to work this (that was AM 31 December, 2003) morning by some guys with the article & photo (source: A.P., perhaps somewhat credible & most certainly better bona fides than The National Enquirer) on page 13A of today's (Wednesday, December 31, 2003) San Antonio Express-News.
The newspaper photograph is a bit fuzzy & other than some (2" mesh ?) chainlink fencing, there's not really much in the way of a size-scaling reference. Nevertheless, that is one humongous snake. It is definitely a female Reticulated Python, The same species as Little Snooky, a male. The females of most species of python grow considerably larger than the males, so thusfar, the news fineprint & unstated details do hang together. In the newspaper photograph, some (apparently healed) scarring is apparent.
From
http://www.brudirect.com/DailyInfo/N...10104/wn02.htm with commentary:
Jakarta - A recreation park in Indonesia is displaying a 49-foot python -- making it the longest ever captured -- that was revered as a tribal ruler and has a huge appetite for dogs.
The "revered as a tribal ruler" (some news agency accounts say "elder") & that sort of hangs together with the animistic ancestor worship cultures of the literally stoneage indigenous tribal peoples of the Indonesian highlands & rainforrests. Retics are notorious dog-stealers, so that part also hangs well.
The huge, dark-colored male snake has a diameter (more likely circumference) of 2.8 feet, weighs 984 pounds and is 48 feet, 7 inches long, according to keepers of an animal exhibition at the Curugsewu (there are several variations in this & other place names, probably due to translation & transliteration inconsistencies) park in the small Central Java town of Kendal.
The proportions of the tail definitely show that this snake is a female. The length is given in other reports as 49 feet, 48 feet 8 inches, 14.75 Meters, 14.85 Meters, etc., all rather close to each other & mayhaps the variances are simply due to arithmetic & rounding errors. The "diameter of 2.8 feet" might be plausible where the last batch of dogs are tucked away inside, but would be absurd for the majority of the body length.
Snake handler Imam Darmanto told Reuters the nameless (see excerpted quote & annotation below) serpent likes to gulp down dogs.
Again, wherever they are indigenous, retics are notorious dog-stealers. Most of these places, the human population is canophagous as well & homophagous (cannibals) to boot - David Rockefeller, Jr., (I'm not 100% sure about this poor guy's name, except for the Rockefeller) was killed & eaten by these folks
"This snake swallows up dogs. In a month, it can eat around five dogs," he said.
Indigenous domestic dogs in the regions where the retics live run around 20 pounds or so. At that, 5 dogs is only 100 pounds & the snake would most probably eat quite a few more than that if given the opportunity.
From
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stori...64040/1/.html:
The reptile, which measures 14.85 metres and weighs in at 447 kilogrammes, the Suara Merdeka regional newspaper reported.
Again, the various systems of measurements & the units used create some ambiguity, but nothing alarming. This is still one heck of a big snake.
The serpent, which staff in the small recreation park have christened Kembang Wangi or Fragrant Flower, was found in a forest in Jambi on Sumatra island and was purchased from its captor before being put on show and could be the largest snake found in nearly 100 years.
"Fragrant Flower," indeed. Snake poop is the rankest & nastiest-smelling fecal excrement you have ever smelled. Mayhaps they model their naming on Hong Kong - "Fragrant Harbor". If the vital statistics hold up to accurate scrutiny & verification, this is the largest snake that has ever been found, period.
From
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/...?story=476931:
They are capable of eating animals as large as sheep and have also been known to attack humans. Many of them are able to stretch their jaws wider than the width of a man's shoulders.Fragrant Flower is currently confined to eating three or four dogs a month, according to local newspaper reports.Samantha, a 26ft python and a former title holder for the longest snake in the world, used to be fed one heated-up dead pig a month, which she took 15 minutes to swallow and one week to digest.
At least these guys got the attack part right. Other reports state "eat or eaten human beings". There have been several people killed by retics, including the Dallas, TX, fool who got yanked down a staircase & suffered a broken neck. However, there still has never been a verified report of a retic (not so clear for the green anaconda) of a human being actually being eaten by a retic. There have been several Internet Hoaxes, complete with photographs, purporting to show a retic with an eaten human cut out of it, but these are all hoaxes a-la-Photoshop. Retics will eat monkeys, but will not (normally, insofar as can be determined experimentally) eat cats or humans. In areas where retics exist in the wild, the cats are tigers & the people are pretty much wild & eat the retics as well. Evolution pressure creates an "avoid cats & humans gene" simply because if you are a retic & you mess with tigers or humans, you don't live long enough to lay eggs & pass on the gene for your folly.
As better photographs become available, I am growing increasingly suspicious of the specifications initially given for the recently disclosed giant python.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/...ry/3356945.stm
There are 5 fresh photos in the gallery at this URL. I tried to make the hyperlink clickable, please lemme know if it worked or not. Unless the humans in the photos are atypical specimens of Indonesians (like maybe giants from American Samoa), this snake is a really big one, but not quite as large as initially reported. The chainlink fencing material is definitely the 2" mesh size. The planks appear to be 2" X 12"s at the max.
From:
http://heraldsun.news.com.au/common/...55E663,00.html
Named Kembang Wangi, or Fragrant Flower (yeah, right), it was found in a forest in Jambi on the island of Sumatra in 2002. One report said it took 65 men to capture the snake. (It generally requires one man per yard of snake. These guys must have been dwarves.) The python measures 14.85m and weighs 447kg, the Suara Merdeka regional newspaper reported. It has a maximum body circumference of 85cm (This is = 33.464566... inches & may have been the basis for the {mistaken?} report of the snake having a diameter of about 2 3/4 feet. Pythons are distinctly square/rectangular in cross-section, but if circular, the circumference given would be just a bit over 10 5/8 inches.) Republika newspaper said it was 19m long when captured but 4m was reportedly severed after a rotten deer was found undigested in its stomach. (There is obviously something seriously wrong with the reporting of "Republika newspaper".)
http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2003.../f200.raw.html
Tuesday, December 30, 2003 The Halifax Herald Limited
Zoo's monster python could be off the scale for size
By Tim Moore / The Times of London
Coil slowly unravelling {sic} over heavy coil, a reticulated python named Fragrant Flower moved menacingly (this adjective is a bit of a subjective stretch, don'tcha think?) 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 (Coprotauria, unsubstantiable bogus hearsay with no basis in verifiable fact. Their heads can open up to a diameter of about three times the resting width & this is pretty amazingly awesome, but unless the man is a dwarf, no way, Jose!). 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. (Every last one of these purported or supposed "rewards" has turned out to be a hoax. First time I've seen Teddy Roosevelt blamed for starting one, though.) 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." (Actually, it is FAT snakes that appear to be longer than they actually are. On the other hand, I can tell you for sure that the chicken snake that was warming itself under the hen when I reached in to gather the eggs was at least 57 feet long & weighed several tons.) 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.
This one is mostly plagiarized material rehashed from other sources, with a few more errors tossed in just for good measure:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/indonesia/...113948,00.html
It's a fussy eater, apparently. But when you are longer than a double-decker bus, and weigh as much as six grown men, you can afford to be. Certainly, the owners of a zoo in Indonesia haven't been quibbling over the dietary needs of an enormous python, which prefers to eat four fierce brown dogs every month. The snake, they claimed yesterday, is the longest and heaviest ever captured. Doing so was no mean feat in itself. According to reports, it took 65 men (They musta been dwarves.) and the blessing of a tribal leader to snare it. Officials at the zoo in Curugsewu, central Java, told the Republika newspaper that the reticulated python is 14.85m (49ft) long and has a maximum body circumference of 85cm (almost three feet). It weighs, they say, 447kg (70 stone, 3lbs). It was impossible to verify the claim yesterday because the only photos available were of the black and brown reptile curled up, apparently asleep. The Guinness Book of World Records lists the longest captured snake as a 9.75m (32ft) reticulated python found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 1912. The heaviest is a 182.76kg Burmese python in Illinois, US. Republika quoted a keeper at the zoo, Rohmad, as saying that when the unnamed snake was captured, in Jambi province on Sumatra in mid-2002, it was 19m long. Four metres reportedly had to be severed after a rotten deer was found undigested in its stomach. (This is so incredibly bogus.) Reticulated pythons, found across south-east Asia, are considered the longest snake species but adults usually measure only between three and six metres long. They kill their prey by biting it, hanging on with their 100 teeth and then squeezing it to death by wrapping their bodies around it. Mr Rohmad said its diet includes three to four local dogs a month but that it is rather fussy about its food. "We have given it dogs of various colours but this snake didn't want to eat them," he was quoted as saying. "It only wants to eat fierce brown dogs." (More likely, they just have a surplus of nasty-tempered feral brown dogs.) He added that the python sheds its skin every 35 days, taking 10 days to do so. It was captured by a 58-year-old python expert from east Java who was summoned to Jambi after locals, who stumbled upon it while foraging for wood, were too afraid to approach it. The expert reportedly needed 65 helpers to snare the python and the blessing of tribal leaders as pythons are regarded as deities by many locals. The python is proving a major attraction. About 700 people visit the Curugsewu zoo every day to admire the new, albeit rather lazy, star. Mr Rohmad said most visitors keep well away as they are afraid the snake will suddenly escape and attack them. Reticulated pythons have been known to attack humans, but we are not regarded as its usual or favourite fare. The head of the government district, Hendi Budoro, said he had only recently heard about the python. "I have just appointed a team to investigate this snake so we cannot confirm its weight and height yet," he said. "It might take some time but it would be a great honour for us if it is true."
Pics:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...jak10512301108
Text from the slideshow embedded in the above:
A huge reticulated python sits in its cage at a Indonesian recreation park in the small Central Java town of Kendal December 30, 2003. The huge, dark-colored male snake has a diameter of 2.8 feet, weighs 984 pounds and is 48 feet, 7 inches long, according to keepers at the Curugsewu park. (Dwi Oblo/Reuters)
The snake is pretty obviously a female & the reporting journalist doofus doesn't know the difference between diameter & circumference. These errors appear in several other reports & accounts - this juajalote might be the cause.
More pix & 32 meters long !!
http://www.detik.com/berita-foto/200...1-122144.shtml
There is a video clip @
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3845750/ http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3845750/ . For some reason, probably due to my antispyware software, I can't get this video to play on this computer.
I'm still digging around for information & photographs regarding this animal. I'm not quite ready to update my passport & apply for a visa to Indonesia, though.
We can accurately anticipate a flurry of activity from the hoaxers, so keep your skeptical spectacles on.
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