Woman Gets Swallowed Whole By 22-Foot Python While At Work
By The Evangelist
November 4, 2022
When Jahrah, 54, left her home for work as a tree tapper on an Indonesian rubber plantation on Sunday morning, it was the last time her family would see her alive. When Jahrah failed to return home that afternoon, her husband sounded the alarm and went out to find her.
The first sign that something was wrong was his discovery of his missing wife’s sandals, jacket, headscarf and knife on the forest floor.
The second sign was a heavily bloated snake, encountered by a search party looking for Jahrah the following morning.
“During the search the team found a giant python, measuring 7 meters [22 feet] in length, which we suspected had preyed on the victim,” the local police later said in a statement, which had referred to the victim simply as “Jahrah,” in line with the Indonesian custom of going by just one name. “The team captured the snake.”
The search team killed the reptile and sliced open its stomach, where they discovered Jahrah’s remains completely intact.
“The victim’s body was not destroyed when we found her inside the snake, meaning that she had only been recently swallowed whole,” the police said, after they found the reptile near the village of Betara in Indonesia’s Jambi province, located on Sumatra island.
Nonvenomous pythons usually prefer to not attack humans, choosing instead to feed on smaller animals — which they secure with a nonvenomous bite before suffocating to death through constriction and then eat.
But occasionally, humans are known to become their prey, too.
Snake conservationist Nathan Rusli, director of the Indonesia Herpetofauna Foundation, suspects a reticulated python was likely responsible. The species is the only reptile living in the Sumatran province of Jambi that is large enough to have consumed an adult human, he told The Washington Post.
“They are constrictors, so what they do is coil their body around you. They will give you a hug of death. You breathe in and your body gets smaller, it tightens its grip, and you can’t breathe out,” Rusli explained. “The top and bottom jaw of a snake is connected by ligaments, it’s quite flexible. They can swallow prey larger than the size of their head.”
This rarely happens, but it has to suck when it happens to you.
Flip the page for the video of them taking her body out of the snake. (BSOnewsletter)
