This incredible, very real photo taken in 2005 in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia is doing the rounds on Reddit again :



That's an olive python trying to swallow a wallaroo. According to a person who claimed to have snapped this photo, the python spent about an hour trying to drag the marsupial from the water and then gave up.

A closer look :



If you're not familiar with the beautiful Australian olive python, here's a video, but don't hold anything of value in your hands as you watch this :

What If You Decide It Tastes Like Shit Halfway Through?

A fantastic series of photos here, of a black-headed python consuming a big fat goanna, near the Cloudbreak mine in the Pilbara.

Can python do it?



Yes python can.



It took five hours for the python to finish its lunch.

The whole series of photos is here.

SNAKE!

Even the most absurd, but curiously entertaining, of movie plots have a weird tendency to eventually come true :

Qantas had to take a plane out of service when baby snakes went missing from a package being carried in the cargo hold earlier this week.

Twelve baby pythons were in the cargo of a flight from Alice Springs to Melbourne on Tuesday, but on arrival only eight were left.

Fun python fact :

"Our people called in a reptile expert and there was a suggestion that some of the baby pythons had eaten the other pythons because apparently it is not uncommon for baby pythons to eat each other," he said.

That goes right up there with the story an NT local told me about how crocodiles in the East Alligator River will lay extra eggs when food supplies are low, so they have fresh crocodile to eat later.

Snake Must Not Eat Snake


Photo by Tony Barton

Isn't this one of signs of the Apocalypse or something?

Mr Barton says it took about 10 to 15 minutes for the black snake to fully consume the brown snake, which he says was about 135 centimetres long.

Then it went off for a snooze.

"It was fairly sluggish after such a huge meal," he said.

Not long after, the snake returned - this time to the back lawn.

"I was having a close look at it when it opened its mouth a little bit and I spotted this beady eye and the head of the brown snake in its mouth!

"....the brown snake came out a few inches, fastened onto the black's lower jaw and pulled itself completely out.

"It had all this mucus all over it. Then the two parted ways."

Maybe brown snakes are the morons of the Serpentes world : "Yo Brownie! I got a mouse for you, but you gotta come in here and get it."

Points For Effort

Now this, this is amazing...


Snake Nearly Swallows Whole Kangaroo - Watch more free videos


Do snakes dare each other on to such remarkable feats of jaw stretching?

"Pffft. I once ate a whole koala, claws, everything."

"Oh yeah? Right. See that wallaby over there? Well, watch this!"

Another fantastic video to anti-promote Australia to tourists. 'It's not just dingos that can swallow your baby.'

Note to international readers : as the video shows, we Australians really do stand around in crowds on suburban street corners watching huge snakes trying to swallow wallabies and 'roos. Happens all the time.