Warning: This story and the video below contains graphic imagery
There have been many hoaxes about pythons swallowing adult humans whole in the past (including one fake viral image of a disgorged snake having supposedly swallowed a man in Jakarta), but there has never been a recorded instance of a reticulated python actually doing so.
Well, according to reports and a video from Salubrio Village in West Sulawesi, one of their local residents may have become the first person to fall victim to this gruesome fate.
The village’s secretary, Salubiro Junaedi, recounted the chronology leading up to the horrible discovery to Tribun Timur. According to him, a 25 year-old farmer named Akbar went missing Sunday after he left his home at around 7pm to head to his palm oil plantation with some harvesting equipment.
Akbar did not return as usual the next day, and some villagers reported hearing a scream coming from the direction of his plantation in the afternoon, but they thought it was the sound of local hunters attacking a wild pig. Since it was very brief and did not include a cry for help, they did not investigate it at the time.
But worries about Akbar’s absence increased throughout the day, and a search party went looking for him that night.
At around 10pm, one resident found a huge 7-meter python at the edge of Akbar’s plantation. The reptile had clearly just swallowed something huge, and villagers immediately recognized the shape of what it might be.
“Once we captured the snake, the boots worn by Akbar were clearly visible in the snake’s belly. So we cut it’s stomach open fit and then found Akbar dead inside,” Junaedi said as quoted by Tribun Jambi, adding that it took about ten machete blows to free the victim’s body from the reptile.
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As the photos show, Akbar’s body and clothing were found intact inside the snake’s body.
The young man’s wife and two children had gone to a nearby city and were not around when his gruesome fate was discovered.
Reticulated pythons can grow to be 8.5 meters in length and have been known to swallow dogs, pigs and even sun bears whole. There have been reports of them eating swallowing small children, but no other incident with an adult human had been previously recorded.