Is it so dangerous for an anaconda snake?

The biggest snake - an anaconda - thanks to Hollywood thrillers, has long been a talk of the town. Say, this insatiable monster feeds on people, it perfectly moves overland, and its victim breaks all the bones, and even swallows it whole alive. Let's try to separate the truth from myths and tell what this reptile subfamily udavovyh represents with the official name eunectes murinus. For the title of the longest and mightiest snake, several species of anaconda, as well as the Asian mesh python, whose sizes reach sometimes 9 meters, were struggling. The largest in the history of the Earth was the fossil reptile titanoboa cerrejonensis, whose remains were found among the coal seams in the Columbia mine. It lived 60 million years ago, reached 15 meters in length and weighed about a ton. It is assumed that modern anacondas originated from it. Their several species, and they all live in the impenetrable jungles of Latin America. The most common - eunectes murinus, a green or giant snake anaconda, photo of which became the basis for creating a cinematic image of a terrible cannibal. It is common not only in the equatorial forests of Latin America, but also on the island of Trinidad and even in Malaysia. There are also yellow (eunectes notaeus) and black (eunectes deschauenseei) anacondas. But they are much inferior in size to a giant sister.

Let's talk about this kind of record - the green anaconda, which is also called the water python, the mother of the rivers, the bull-killer. Usually it reaches 5-6 meters, which in itself is very impressive. Many hunters and Indians claim that they saw specimens and 15 meters in length, but only the corpse of a reptile that reached 11.43 meters is accurately measured. And among the living denizens the longest is the snake of the anaconda, which lives in captivity (under the New York Zoological Society) - its length is 9 meters. But, perhaps, in the achievement of these parameters a large role was played by a healthy and balanced diet of the animal.

We figured out the sizes. And what kind of habits? Is it true that the anaconda snake is so prone to humanism that it creeps into villages and sows death and destruction there? In fact, the habitat of a reptile is water and water once more. On land, where the snake crawls only occasionally to bask in the sun, it is terribly awkward. Probably affects its weight of 200 kilograms. If the reservoir dries up, and there is no other nearby, the snake simply burrows into the mud and hibernates in anticipation of the rainy season. Even these giant pythons mate in the water.

His prey anakonda snake waiting in ambush. Everything in her camouflage color is designed to introduce an animal that has descended to watering, misleading, to make it not pay attention to "just the rotten leaves floating on the surface of standing water." But if an unlucky tapir or a deer comes closer to the water's edge, the snake rushes at him like a lightning bolt. Teeth have an anaconda, but they are not poisonous, so they are only needed to keep the victim in the first few seconds. Next, the muscles of the giant body go into action: the embrace of the python is truly deadly. But anacondas do not flatten their food, they just choke (which helps also the water, in which the snake drags its prey). Swallow reptile food really whole, stretching the throat.

Is the snake of the anaconda so terrible? Indians of Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana and Venezuela, who have long used them for food, to this day consider the meat of this reptile a delicacy. The process of hunting for an anaconda is impressive, but absolutely devoid of any risk. In fact, unlike defenseless tapirs and monkeys, a man is armed and very dangerous.