Search for Missing Man Turns Up His Boot, Then a Bloated Snake
Victim was swallowed whole in remote Indonesia
By Arden Dier , Newser Staff
Posted Mar 29, 2017 11:30 AM CDT
(Newser) – The body of a 25-year-old man who vanished in a remote village in Indonesia has been found—in the belly of a 23-foot-long snake. Father of two Akbar Salubiro had gone to harvest palm oil on his family's plantation on the island of Sulawesi on Sunday when villagers "heard cries from the palm grove," a village secretary tells the Jakarta Post . A search party found scattered fruit, a tool, and a boot, before coming across a bloated reticulated python, reports the AP .
A video of the subsequent dissection (it's graphic, but here for the brave) shows human legs inside the snake as villagers slowly peel it open. Police say Akbar's whole body was found in the snake’s stomach along with his other, well-preserved boot, per the BBC . The village secretary says Akbar had a wound on his back suggesting he was attacked from behind. Reticulated pythons typically seize boars and wild dogs with their fangs before suffocating the prey and swallowing it whole. Attacks on humans are rare. http://www.newser.com/story/240487/villagers-find-missing-man-inside-a-python.html?utm_source=part&utm_medium=earthlink&utm_campaign=rss_topnews
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Reticulated Pythons, even ones that big, rarely will kill and swallow an adult human male. I guess this poor guy was an exception. If you click on the link it takes you to a five minute You Tube video of the villagers cutting the snake open (they cut it's head off first) to recover his remains, which are still intact as is obvious by being able to see his legs and buttocks, with one boot still on one of his feet as they cut. Very interesting to watch.
This is probably the first time I was glad I couldn't use YouTube. I just ate breakfast and I didn't want it to end up all over my keyboard.
And the Everglades are full of pythons....They recently captured one that was 19 feet.
The ones in the Everglades are Burmese pythons...Not that it makes a difference.
No it really doesn't as they'll get nearly as big. The Reticulated Pythons are supposed get to be the longest, but the are all killers. It's just rare for one to kill a human, but it's only a matter of time until one does in the Everglades, most likely a child or young person. There are Reticulated ones out there too.
Someone should warn Pogo and his friends. Isn't the Okeefenokee Swamp in the Everglades?
Actually it's on the Georgia/Florida line (mostly in Georgia). I don't know if any Pythons or other man eating snakes have been released there or not?
I guess my knowledge of American geography is somewhat limited.
I live in the States and I had to google it.
Despite that, stories about giant snakes attacking and eating humans crop up from time to time.
Many end up being fake, accompanied by images that have telltale signs of a staged death, such as the lack of digestive juices covering the “corpse,” Taylor said.
“Honestly, people try to fake things a lot when it comes to big snakes,” she said.
As for the video from Indonesia, Taylor said she couldn’t determine its authenticity. But the fact that the outcome was recorded on video, rather than documented only in still images, is noteworthy, she said.
“The video doesn’t have any strong indicators that it is fake,” she said. “If it’s real, it’s really disappointing that someone lost their life.”