Have you ever seen a 300-meter-long snake come out of nowhere? In fact, don't say goodbye, even if you think about it, it is terrible, and it is rumored that tourists in the Red Sea area have experienced a terrifying moment! In 2016, a 300-meter-long python appeared near the Red Sea, killing 320 tourists and 125 divers after wreaking havoc in the area, and finally sent troops to kill it to avoid further escalation. Is there really such a big snake in the world? What is the largest snake in existence? How big was the largest snake in prehistory?
Is there really a 300-meter python?
Located between northeastern Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, the Red Sea is often red due to the rolling heat waves and red-yellow dust mist from the surrounding desert. At the same time, it is also the world's most salinity ocean, beautiful scenery and unique seawater, attracting thousands of tourists every year. However, in 2016, many tourists have experienced a thrilling journey, with good luck escaping death and bad luck directly dying.
According to online sources, a 300-meter-long python suddenly appeared here that year, bringing disaster to nearly 450 tourists. In the face of such a behemoth, tourists are basically as incapable of resisting as ants, about the same visual sense as ants crawling under human feet. It was not until the local government dispatched troops, supplemented by aircraft, armored vehicles and various weapons, that the giant snake was successfully killed.
At that time, the news spread on the Internet, as if the witnesses were telling their own experiences, but then they quickly disappeared because it was fake news! As you can see through the pictures attached online, don't make these photos too fake! The soldiers and armored vehicles in the picture may be real, but the python on the car is a bit too fake, and it is completely a practice work for PS beginners (a picture processing software), and even the most basic composition and proportions are not correct.
The fever of fake news quickly faded, and there could not be such a huge python around the Red Sea. In fact, not only the Red Sea, there are many legends about giant pythons in the mainland, such as the Qinling area has a panshan python, the "Classic of Mountains and Seas" also recorded the story of the nine yin candles, saying that its "human face snake body up to a thousand miles, a breath and a breath can cause the change of winter and summer, a slight movement is a landslide crack", much more powerful than the 300-meter python in the Red Sea.
If there is a giant snake, it is impossible to grow in a day, you can imagine how much it eats during its growth, in order to obtain food it should usually show its tracks, after all, there are no deep mountains and old forests around the Red Sea to hide, and snakes cannot live on the seabed for a long time. As long as it appears near the touristy Red Sea, it should have been discovered long ago, and even the slightest trace of it will surely attract biologists around the world, after all, the attraction of discovering new species to them is enormous.
The world's largest snake
The 300-meter python turned out to be fake, so how big is the largest surviving snake in the world? According to professionals who study snakes, the largest python currently exists in the world, with a body length of no more than 8 meters. Seeing this data, I think everyone is very disappointed, after all, the difference between 300 meters and 300 meters is too big.
Relevant data records that the longest surviving snake is the reticulated python, humans have captured a reticulated python with a length of 7.1 meters and a weight of 65 kilograms in the wild, which is about the same weight as an adult, while the length of more than 7 meters is about 4 times the height of adults. Many people usually see the small snake is scared, if such a huge snake appears in front of them, I believe many people directly kneel.
The world's largest snake recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records is the "Medusa" with a body length of 7.67 meters, which also belongs to the reticulated python family. As for the giant python such as the forest hopper, the length of the single body is not as long as the reticulated python, but the adult forest hopper can weigh more than 200 kilograms, which is the longest and heaviest two types of snakes in the world.
In fact, as early as 2002, Indonesia also had a "14-meter long snake" oolong incident, claiming to have found a snake with a body length of more than 14 meters. As soon as this news broke, it attracted widespread attention from biologists, and they ran to Indonesia to find out. But the ideal is very full of reality is very cruel, many experts gathered in Indonesia only to find that the 14-meter measurement is a complete mistake.
It turned out that the measurement was done by non-professionals at that time, and the face of the python was extremely nervous, completely unaware that the python was molting at that time, measuring the whole python and the skin of the molt as a whole, and then came up with a measurement of 14 meters, in fact, the length of the snake was still only about 7 meters, and many experts could be described as taking advantage of the excitement and failure!
How big were prehistoric snakes?
There are no such huge snakes now, so were there any snakes with a body length of more than 300 meters in prehistoric times? According to the fossils excavated so far, the largest prehistoric snake is the Titan Python, but there is still a big gap from the length of 300 meters.
In 2009, an archaeological team from the United States was conducting archaeological excavations in Colombia and found more than 180 animal vertebrae fossils, which resemble snake vertebrae, but are much larger than any existing snake vertebrae, and archaeologists judged that these fossils came from a prehistoric python, so they named it Titan Python, and the word "Titan" generally refers to those particularly huge things in the Western context.
According to the computer restoration screen, these fossils come from 28 giant pythons, and their body length is between 12 meters and 14 meters, the longest is about 15 meters, and the diameter is about 1 meter. These pythons lived about 55 million years ago, when the earth was undergoing a very obvious warming process, when the area where the python lived was more than 5.5 degrees Celsius higher than it is now, and the high temperature and humid environment coupled with sufficient food provided the innate conditions for the survival of the python.
According to experts, the Titan python at that time should belong to the warm snake class, the high temperature environment allowed it to have a strong metabolic capacity, and the abundant food in the tropical rainforest ensured that it would not go hungry. Even so, the Titan Python is only fourteen or fifteen meters long, and the distance is still too far away from 300 meters, so according to the current human excavation records and observation records, there is no 300-meter giant snake, and as for the thousand-mile-long candle nine yin recorded in the Classic of Mountains and Seas, it is impossible to talk about it.
From prehistory to modern times, the overall temperature showed a downward trend, and the size of the python gradually decreased with environmental changes. But now because of the impact of human industrial production activities, the global climate has a continuous warming trend, if the warming trend is not contained and returns to the high temperature environment of the prehistoric era, it is impossible to rule out the possibility of the reappearance of giant pythons, how should small humans deal with it at that time?
Author: Niu Xiaotian Proofreader: Wei Yang