What HAS this python eaten?: Viral story of drunk man eaten by python in India is fake

What HAS this python eaten?: Viral story of drunk man eaten by python in India is fake

mangaloretoday.com

It seems this python is a serial killer. After eating a drunk man in India, it apparently slithered to China and swallowed one man from there before heading to South Africa to swallow a woman! Wow, while the story seems to be quite interesting, it is fake.

 

This story became viral on Twitter and got almost 13000 retweets. Google Image search revealed that the story was a hoax. This message has been circulating with the same picture on Internet for quite some time now. In June this year, there were reports that a giant snake swallowed a woman near Durban North, South Africa. Then there was a blogger who said that a South African reporter witnessed the incident and sent the picture.

Earlier versions claim that the snake in the picture swallowed a drunken man asleep by a roadway, a man in Jakarta, Indonesia after floods hit the region.

However, all these claims have been wrong and this is definitely a hoax, which has again surfaced. The same picture has shown up time and again with different stories attached to it.

 

If real, this would not be the first reported incident involving a python eating a human whole

One of the deadliest creatures in the world, this would not represent the first time a python has eaten a human.

In 2002, a 20ft python reportedly swallowed a ten-year-old boy whole in Durban, South Africa, in the first recorded man-eating incident for its species.

Meanwhile, last month a ten-foot albino Burmese python swallowed two cats in Florida, United States.

Elsewhere, in 2011 a 16-foot python was found in the Everglades National Park, United States, after swallowing a whole adult deer.

THE PYTHON

Python snakes are found in countries across Africa, Asia and Australia. They are also now found in North America after making their way into the Everglades National Park, Florida.

There are currently 26 species of python recognised across the world.

Reported attacks on humans are rare, and the snake is generaly expected to remain calm unless startled or provoked.

Their victims are killed by constriction and then swallowed whole. Depending on the size of the prey, the digestion process can take weeks.