It was a terrible incident in Indonesia where a woman was swallowed up in its entirety by a giant python. One day in 2018, Watiba, 54, went missing. She allegedly went out with a torch that night to stop wild boars from attacking her soil. The village is located in a rocky area with quite a few caves and is said to have a lot of snake activity. People looked around and found her sandals and machete. Subsequently, 50 meters away, a giant python with a swollen abdomen was seen.
Police Chief Agung Ramos said: "People bring the snake back to the village and cut open its belly. As expected, there was an intact corpse in the belly of the python, and it was Watiba. She was well dressed, but unfortunately she was dead. Her head flushed, her feet close to the python's mouth, apparently swallowed from the head. Villager Ayukatika said: "Everyone was crying, everyone was shocked. It was a poor woman. It's like a horror movie. People were terrified. We are afraid to go out. We can only pray for safety. ”
Pythons can reach lengths of up to 10 meters and tend to ambush their prey. They firmly envelop the victim with strong muscles, causing them to stop or suffocate. Pythons, on the other hand, have large and elastic jaws, meaning they can devour large animals and eat them whole. Humans inevitably become its prey. Mary Ruth, a conservation and research officer at the Singapore Wildlife Sanctuary, told the media that once pythons grow to a certain size, they are no longer interested in rats because that bit of energy is too little. Their prey targets also vary depending on their size. The biggest obstacle for humans to pythons is the shoulder blades because they are not foldable.
This isn't the first recorded case of a python attacking and eating humans. In 2002, a 10-year-old child was swallowed by a rock python in South Africa. Anthropologist Thomas Heidland spent most of his life among the Agatas of the Philippines. He said a quarter of the tribesmen had been attacked by pythons, but most managed to keep them out with machetes.