50 Fun Facts About Pythons

Long thought to suffocate its prey, a python's squeeze is now known to kill mainly by causing what?

Cardiac arrest comes quickly because the tightening coils stop blood reaching the heart and other vital organs, so even the giant species do not crush their prey to death.

The reticulated python of Southeast Asia holds which record among all the world's living snakes?

Longest is its title, with wild adults occasionally stretching past 6 metres, yet two bulkier species of snake still outweigh it.

The ball python, a hugely popular pet snake, earned its name by doing what when frightened?

Curling up tightly with its head tucked in the middle is its defence instead of biting, which is one reason the species is so easy for people to handle.

Which giant Asian pet-trade snake has overrun the Everglades and devastated its mammals?

Burmese pythons were officially recognised as a breeding population in South Florida in 2000, and the United States banned further imports in 2012.

Which pop star danced with a live albino python on her shoulders at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards?

Britney Spears also shared the stage with a white tiger that night, performing I'm a Slave 4 U at New York's Metropolitan Opera House.

What do the pits lining a python's lips detect, helping it find prey in complete darkness?

Body heat reaches the pits as infrared radiation, so a python can pick out a warm-blooded animal on a moonless night without seeing it.

The tiny claw-like spurs beside a python's vent are the evolutionary leftovers of which body parts?

Hind legs shrank away in the ancestors of snakes, but male pythons still move the leftover spurs to grip and stimulate females during courtship.

Which python is Mowgli's ally in Kipling's The Jungle Book, though Disney's film makes him a villain?

Kaa helps rescue Mowgli from the monkeys in Kipling's tale, hypnotising them toward his jaws, whereas Disney's version tries to eat the boy.

Which Greek archer god killed the monstrous serpent Python and claimed the oracle it guarded?

Apollo shot the serpent with his arrows, and in 1803 the zoologist François Daudin borrowed the monster's name for the real snakes.

What event causes the main chamber of a python's heart to grow about 40 percent heavier?

Eating a large meal sends a python's oxygen use soaring to as much as 40 times its resting rate, and the heart enlarges to fuel the work of digestion.

Road surveys found sightings of which Everglades mammal down 99.3 percent after pythons spread?

Raccoons all but vanished from the survey routes, and marsh rabbits released in the park as a test were wiped out by pythons in under 11 months.

Which 1992 hurricane wrecked a python breeding facility, loosing snakes into the Everglades?

Andrew set many captive snakes free, yet research suggests the wild population more likely grew from a small number of released pets.

Which water-loving giant outweighs every python, making it the heaviest snake species alive?

The green anaconda is so thickset that a 5.2-metre individual carries about the same bulk as a 7.4-metre reticulated python.

In which part of the world do boa constrictors live wild, with no native pythons at all?

South America has boas instead, because wild pythons are native only to Africa, Asia and Australia, apart from escaped or released pets.

How does a brooding mother python, a cold-blooded reptile, warm the eggs held in her coils?

Shivering her muscles makes enough warmth to hold the clutch at a steady temperature, and she does not feed at all until the eggs hatch.

Unusually for a snake, the Central African rock python mother does what for up to two weeks after hatching?

She guards her young from predators, having first coiled around as many as 100 eggs for about 90 days in an old burrow or cave.

Baby pythons slice their way out of the shell at hatching using which temporary tool?

An egg tooth does the cutting, yet the hatchlings often stay inside the opened shell until they are ready for their first shed of skin.

What is the term for the virgin birth by which captive female pythons have produced young without mating?

Parthenogenesis was confirmed in a pet ball python by comparing the mother's genes with those of her embryos, which had no father.

Pet pythons, like other reptiles, can pass which bacterial infection to the people who handle them?

Salmonella can reach people through a python's droppings, open wounds or contaminated water, although the snakes carry no venom at all.

Australia's Children's python, a small and popular pet, takes its misleading name from what?

A museum curator called John George Children, of the British Museum, was honoured in 1842 by the zoologist he had mentored, John Edward Gray.

Australia's pygmy python, the smallest member of the python family, is often found living inside what?

Termite mounds give the snake its other name, the anthill python, and adults grow to only about 50 centimetres in length.

The pygmy python's scientific name honours which Australian city, far outside the snake's actual range?

Perth was wrongly assumed to be where the first specimen was collected, but the snake actually lives far away in the north-west of Western Australia.

Which snake of New Guinea's rainforests hatches bright yellow or red, then changes colour as it grows?

The green tree python can switch colour in just 5 to 10 days at about a year old, and it rests looped over branches like the unrelated emerald tree boa.

Southeast Asia's short, stocky blood python owes its dramatic common name to what?

Its red colouring runs from rich, bright red to a dull rust, and the snake's heavy build means it generally looks overweight.

The reticulated python's name comes from a Latin word comparing its complex skin pattern to what?

A net is what the Latin reticulatus describes, and among shadowy jungle leaf litter the busy pattern makes the huge snake virtually disappear.

A python in Borneo, measured at nearly 7 metres, was caught after swallowing which radio-collared animal?

A sun bear weighing 23 kg was the reticulated python's catch, and the snake needed some 10 weeks to digest it.

On which Indonesian island have most confirmed cases of pythons swallowing people occurred?

Sulawesi saw the first fully confirmed case in 2017, when a missing farmer was found inside a 7-metre python the day after he vanished.

What was the name of the Kansas City python measured at over 25 feet for Guinness in 2011?

Medusa, a reticulated python, weighed about 350 pounds and was recognised by Guinness as the lengthiest snake ever kept in captivity.

Escaped pet pythons, many of them albino, have formed a wild population on which Caribbean island?

Puerto Rico has recorded reticulated pythons since 2009, and the population's unusually high rate of albinism points to pet stock as its origin.

What do breeders call the thousands of designer colour patterns created in captive ball pythons?

Morphs are patterns that never occur in the wild, and rare new ones have sold for several thousand dollars each.

The 'spider' pattern bred into pet ball pythons was barred from some reptile shows because it causes what?

A head wobble and poor coordination come with the gene, a fault once blamed on the nerves but now traced to a defect of the inner ear.

Among the Igbo of Nigeria, what traditionally happens when a revered ball python is accidentally killed?

It is given a funeral, complete with a small coffin, because the Igbo regard the snake as a symbol of the earth it travels so close to.

Followers of which West African religion keep sacred pythons inside temples in Benin?

Vodun worshippers see the python as a symbol of strength, and each year people sacrifice animals and confess their sins to the temple snakes.

In the folklore of northwestern Ghana, a python saved people fleeing across a river by becoming what?

A log is what the snake became, and in thanks people there still treat pythons as saviours that must never be hurt or eaten.

Python skin stretched over the sound box gives which two-stringed Chinese fiddle its distinctive voice?

The erhu owes its sound to the vibrating python skin, so China now requires certificates showing the skin did not come from wild snakes.

The ancient Pythian Games, marking the slaying of the serpent Python, were held at which Greek sanctuary?

Delphi hosted the festival every four years, and it ranked second in importance to the Olympics, having begun as a contest in music rather than athletics.

What is the name for the slow crawl that lets a heavy python creep forward in a perfectly straight line?

Rectilinear locomotion works by lifting and pulling the belly skin forward in sections while the ribs stay still, so the body hardly bends.

Most advanced snakes have just one working example of which organ, while pythons still have two?

Lung count marks pythons out as primitive: they kept both, along with traces of a pelvis, while more advanced snakes rely on a single one.

A python swallows huge prey without dislocating its jaw because its lower jaw halves are joined by what?

An elastic ligament at the chin lets the two halves of the lower jaw spread apart and move independently, so a snake can swallow prey wider than itself.

Hunting in cramped burrows, Australia's woma python kills prey by doing what instead of coiling around it?

Pinning it to the wall with a loop of its body kills more slowly than a normal squeeze, so many adult womas carry scars from prey that fought back.

The black-headed python of northern Australia is unusual among pythons for feeding mainly on what?

Lizards and snakes dominate its menu, with skinks the main prey, and it will even swallow other black-headed pythons.

The amethystine python of New Guinea is named after a purple gemstone because of what feature of its scales?

An iridescent sheen with a milky, amethyst-like tint plays over its scales, and the species is the largest snake native to Papua New Guinea.

Which tree-climbing giant of Queensland's tropical forests is the biggest snake native to Australia?

The scrub python is Australia's biggest snake, and unusually for a python its males grow about a third longer and twice as heavy as the females.

The diamond python, a coastal Australian carpet python, holds which geographic record among pythons?

Most southerly range of any python is its claim, and its name comes from the diamond-like rosettes of yellow scales along its body.

DNA studies show pythons are more closely related to which shiny-scaled Asian group than to the boas?

Sunbeam snakes and the Mexican burrowing python are the pythons' nearest kin, so the likeness to boas is only skin deep.

A live roundworm usually found in carpet pythons was once pulled from which organ of an Australian woman?

Brain scans showed a lesion, and the biopsy that followed pulled out the living worm, the first time the parasite had ever been identified in a human.

What became of the $50,000 reward a New York zoological society offered for a live snake over 30 feet long?

Nobody ever claimed it, although the offer stood for many years and rose from $1,000, because no snake of that size has ever been produced.

Australia's harmless olive python is sometimes killed after being mistaken for which venomous species?

The king brown snake, also called the mulga, is a similar plain brown, though the python can grow beyond 4 metres and is prized by keepers for its placid nature.

Which ability has allowed the reticulated python to colonise many small islands across its Asian range?

Swimming long distances comes easily to this snake, which has been reported far out at sea and also lives beside rivers, streams and lakes.

Python skin covers the body of the sanshin, a three-stringed banjo-like instrument from which part of Japan?

Okinawa's sanshin is the forerunner of the Japanese shamisen, which was traditionally covered in cat or dog skin rather than python.