Pythons can reach a length of more than 10 meters
(ORDO NEWS) — The longest snake in the world is the reticulated python, Malayopython reticulatus.
Although they typically reach lengths of over 6 meters, the largest ever recorded was a 9.75-meter reticulated python found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 1912.
Unfortunately, this huge specimen was shot, so the record was broken posthumously.
The longest snake in the world ever kept in captivity was a snake named Medusa, which was 7.67 meters long.
According to the 2011 Guinness Book of World Records in which she is commended, Medusa was kept at the “Haunted House at Hell’s Edge” in Kansas City, and it took 15 people carrying the 10-year-old snake to make the record-breaking measurement.
Feeding such a lanky record holder required a mixture of rabbits and pigs, and in one sitting she could swallow an entire 18-kilogram deer.
Medusa herself weighed 158.8 kilograms. While Medusa is the most recent Guinness World Record-record snake, another, longer reticulated python was found in 2018.
The giant reptile measured 8 meters in length but died just three days after it was discovered at a construction site in Penang, Malaysia.
It is assumed that at the time of death the snake laid an egg, but what exactly killed it is unknown.
In addition to being the world’s longest snake, the reticulated python can reproduce on its own through asexual reproduction, also known as parthenogenesis.
An 11-year-old reticulated python named Thelma was the first to demonstrate her talent to the scientific community by laying six fertilized eggs without mating with a male.
The possibility that Thelma accumulated sperm was ruled out using skin samples for genetic analysis, which showed that all six babies were produced by her alone.
In sexual reproduction, the fusion of a sperm and an egg is necessary to create an embryo, but in Thelma’s case, the place of the sperm was taken by cells called polar bodies (which contain the genetic material left over from the formation of the egg).
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