CONSTRICTORS 
REGAL PYTHON 
The regal or reticulated python is the largest known snake, one specimen 
having attained a length of thirty-two feet. The average adult length is 
about twenty-two feet, while two hundred and twenty-five pounds is con¬ 
sidered a good weight. The glistening skin of these giant constrictors is 
covered with an intricate yellow-brown and black design. The head is brown 
with a narrow black line extending backward from the snout, and the eyes 
are red with vertical pupils. 
Goats, leopards, sheep, swans, and other mammals and birds are 
among the constrictor’s victims. Although a fourteen-year-old boy was once 
found in the stomach of a dead python, the snake’s man-eating propensities 
have been exaggerated by legend and in the Swiss Family Robinson. Be¬ 
cause pythons insist on swallowing their victims head first, it is doubtful 
whether the largest of them could swallow a full-grown man; measure¬ 
ments show that the shoulders would be too large for the serpent’s gullet. 
The python attacks its victim by tossing its body around it; in less 
than a few seconds two or three coils surround the prey. Then the reptile 
begins to squeeze. It does not, as popularly supposed, kill by crushing the 
bones, but merely by halting breathing and circulation. Reptiles are more 
difficult to kill by constriction, as the circulatory system of cold-blooded 
animals is less sensitive. In a battle with a lizard, the python comes out 
victor, but half kills itself in the process. 
After swallowing its food, the python becomes sluggish and helpless 
until digestion is nearly completed, and this may take weeks. In this con¬ 
dition the snake is an easy victim for hunters. Natives kill it for food 
and for its beautiful skin, which is made into leather. 
When the python’s meal is digested, the snake — if it has escaped the 
hunter — becomes restless until its appetite is again appeased. 
In captivity a sixteen-pound python swallows an eight-pound rooster 
whole in ten minutes. A twenty-foot python dines on two chickens every ten 
days, while another specimen of the same length devours a twenty-five- 
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