The Brazilian Anaconda

1895

An Immense and Formidable Reptile That Lives to a Great Age.

The late Mr. Bates in his 11 years spent in the Brazilian forests saw and heard more of the habits of the anaconda than most travelers, though, like other great serpents, the individuals of this species are so little common that their appearance in any one district is too infrequent to make a special study of their habits part of the day's work of a busy naturalist. Bates' first personal experience of the creature shows how impossible it is to avoid the python by the ordinary means of isolation sufficient to keep other dangerous creatures at a distance. He was at anchor, in a large boat, in deep water, in the port of Antonio Malagueita.

An anaconda swam out to the boat, lifted its head from the water, broke in the side of a fowlhouse on deck and carried off a couple of fowls. It was found that this snake had been stealing ducks and fowls from this part of the river for months, so a hunt was organized, miles of river bank were searched and the serpent at last found sunning itself in a muddy creek and killed. It was "not a large specimen, only 18 feet 9 inches long." But Mr. Bates measured skins of anacondas which were 21 feet in length and 2 feet in girth, and he adds: "There can be no doubt that this formidable serpent grows to an enormous bulk and lives to a great age, for I have heard of specimens having been killed which measured 42 feet in length, or double the size of the largest which I had the opportunity of examining." We must add a correction here. They were double the length, but the size of these great reptiles, like that of fish, increases enormously with every addition in longitudinal growth.

A snake of 20 feet in length would be probably four times the weight of one 10 feet long, and the bulk of a 40 foot anaconda would approach that of the largest crocodile. Since the publication of "The Naturalist's Voyage on the Amazons" an anaconda of 29 feet has been brought to the Natural History museum at South Kensington. A neighbor of Bates, in Brazil, nearly lost his 10-year-old son by the attack of an anaconda. He had left the boy in his boat while he went to gather fruit, and on his return found him encircled by the snake, whose jaws the father seized and actually tore them asunder. — Spectator.