Chapter 2: Find Them With Your Feet!
That’s me, Brady Barr, with my friend Gerry Martin on the left. Together, we caught this giant Indian rock python.
When catching a snake this big, it’s always best to secure its head first. That’s the biting end!
I was waist-deep in water in a muddy swamp. I was trying not to think about the leeches that might be crawling up my legs. Then—I spotted it! Stretched out in front of me was the biggest snake I had ever seen. It looked as long as a bus!
What was I doing here? My name is Brady Barr. I’m a zoologist (sounds like zoh-AH-luh-gist), a scientist who studies animals. I’ve studied all kinds of animals all over the world. My favorites are reptiles—really big reptiles.
I’ve worked with some real giants. I’ve wrestled crocodiles over 18 feet (5.5 m) long. I’ve captured 10-foot (3-m)-long lizards and turtles the size of small cars.
But until that day in the swamp, I’d never come across a giant snake. Although they’re among the biggest reptiles on the planet, they’re very hard to find. And scientists know surprisingly little about them.
The swamp where I met the giant snake was in northern India. I was there with my friend Gerry Martin, a reptile expert. We had teamed up to study a rare and endangered crocodilian (sounds like krah-koh-DIL-ee-un). But our croc project soon took an unexpected turn.
Some snakes can swallow things three times the size of their own head! How do they do it? Snakes have really flexible jaws. Human jaws are attached to the skull like a door on hinges. All we can do is open and shut them. A snake’s lower jaw is not solidly attached at the chin, like ours is. Each side can move separately. A snake’s jawbone is attached to the skull by stretchy bands of tissue, almost like rubber bands. Using its curved teeth to grip its prey, the snake can slowly stretch out its jaws and move its mouth around its meal.
When Gerry and I got to the small village near our research site, none of the people wanted to talk about crocs. All they wanted to talk about were snakes. They said they had a big problem. Their cows were disappearing. And they believed a giant snake was eating them.
Did You Know?
In The Jungle Book, by Rudyard Kipling, the giant, 100-year-old snake named Kaa is an Indian rock python.
Holy cow! I thought. A cow-eating snake?
This was a story we just had to look into. A snake large enough to eat a cow would have to be a true giant. We’d heard stories like this before. But no scientists had ever been able to check them out. Maybe this was our chance to prove those stories were true.
The villagers told us the giant snake was eating their dogs, cats, and goats, too. They hoped maybe we could catch this snake and take it away to a safe place, far away from the village.
Gerry and I thought the snake was probably an Indian rock python. Rock pythons live in many different habitats. You can find them in low grasslands and on high mountain slopes. But the real giants usually stay near water.
The village was near the Geruwa (sounds like jeh-ROO-wah) River. Gerry wanted to go straight to the swampy area closest to the river, where the water was deepest. It was a great place for a big snake.
I really wanted to see this giant. But I wasn’t so sure I wanted to get into a deep, muddy swamp with it!
Ten-year-old Ramkrishna helped Gerry and me find the huge snake.
Indian rock pythons can grow to more than 20 feet (6 m) long.
They are incredibly strong. A python has more than 10,000 muscles (sounds like MUH-sels) in its body. Humans have fewer than 1,000. Pythons are constrictors (sounds like kun-STRICT-ers). That means they use their muscles to squeeze, or constrict, their prey.
When a python sees an animal it wants to eat, it strikes out with lightning speed. It latches on to it with needle-sharp teeth. The teeth curve backward, toward the snake’s throat. Once an animal is caught in those teeth, it cannot pull away. The snake instantly coils around it and squeezes. When the prey has died, the python opens its mouth wide and swallows it whole.
A snake big enough to swallow a cow could certainly swallow a man! With this thought in my head, I waded into the dark water. I had never seen a truly giant snake in the wild before. But I knew it would be better to find it before it found me. I did not want to experience a python’s big squeeze.
Gerry and I searched for a long time without seeing anything. Then we decided it might be better if we split up. That way we could search more ground—or swamp, that is. Pretty soon, I heard Gerry shouting, “Snake! Snake! Snake!” I nearly jumped out of my skin.
I slogged toward Gerry through the knee-deep water. Peering through the tall grass, I could see he had a small, three-foot (1-m)-long python in his grasp. This was very cool. But I was expecting something a little larger. This couldn’t be the cow-eater, that’s for sure. We split up again and kept searching. After several hours, all we’d found were three more small pythons.
Exhausted, we sat on the riverbank and picked the leeches off our bare legs. After all our effort, we had found only four small snakes. We felt frustrated.
A snake smells with its nose, like humans do.
But a snake has another secret weapon in the world of smell—its forked tongue. A snake flicks its tongue in the air. The two tips pick up tiny particles of odor. When the snake pulls its tongue in, the odor particles are delivered to a special organ on the roof of its mouth, called the Jacobson’s organ. This helps the snake identify the odors. Together, the nose and Jacobson’s organ make the snake a super smeller!
We wanted to get back