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SOME OBSERVATIONS ON THE PYTHONS. 
W. Henry SHEAK, Philadelphia. 
Most of my study has heen given to birds and mammals, but I have had 
some exceptional opportunities to observe the great serpents, especially the 
pythons. I spent five years with the New York Zodlogical Company, better 
known as the Edwards Animal Show, as naturalist and lecturer. We always 
had a number of these monster reptiles in our collection, and sometimes as 
many as sixteen, none of them less than twelve feet in length, and some of 
them more than thirty. The following notes were made during those 
years. 
The ability of snakes to perform feats of swallowing is astounding. I 
once knew a small boa, probably the young of Boa constrictor scarcely four 
feet in length, and with a head no larger than a man’s thumb, to swallow a 
full-grown pigeon. We put the pigeon in the cage at night, thinking that 
an Indian python (Python molurus), seven or eight feet long, would take it, 
but a great swelling in the body of the little boa next morning showed what 
had become of the bird. As no snake chews or rends his prey, we knew 
that it passed his head and throat entire. The enlargement did not dis- 
appear for a week. 
“Tong Tom”, a giant Reticulated python (Python reticulatus), fed on a 
pig weighing forty-five pounds. We wanted to get some photographs of the 
monster reptile taking large prey, so the pig was put in the den alive; but 
as his prey had been killed for him in captivity, the snake got frightened 
when the pig began to move about and squeal, and backed away. When 
the pig was killed and he smelled the warm blood, he took the animal 
at once and in twenty-five minutes it had disappeared. The pig is. however, 
an easy. object to swallow, compared to a dense pelage of fur or feathers. 
For two or three days the stomach was enlarged to almost the size of 
a beer keg, but on the third day the swelling began to diminish, and by the 
end of the fifth the body had returned to its normal diameter. Contrary to 
common belief, these big snakes will generally soon learn to take their prey 
after it has been killed. We usually fed them chickens or rabbits, killed, 
but still warm. We have, however, fed them with cold-storage rabbits 
that were killed in Australia. Miss Grace Clark, a young woman with 
much experience with big snakes in shows, tells me that she once had a 
snake that would take a chicken after it was dressed and cut into pieces, 
receiving the pieces one at a time. One evening we wanted to feed a very 
large pigeon to a small Indian python. Jn order to save him the trouble of 
working over the shoulders, we cut off the wings. After gorging the bird, 
we offered him the wings, which he took and swallowed. 
The python which swallowed the pig was received from Carl Hagenbeck 
of Hamburg, Germany, in July, 1907. Mr. Hagenbeck had a photograph of 
the reptile in the act of swallowing an Indian antelope (Antelope cervi- 
capra) weighing over ninety pounds. He had another Reticulated python 
which swallowed a ninety-sevyen pound ibex. A python in the Cincinnati 
Zoological Gardens swallowed a goat weighing forty-two pounds. All of the 
goat that passed intact were the horns, the hoofs. and a piece of sash rope 
four feet long that had been attached to his neck. 
