The longest-ever species of snake is the Python! Species of Python can be found worldwide, originating from India to Burma and even Africa.
The World’s Longest; Thelma is an 11-year-old reticulated female Python that lives in the Louisville Zoo in Kentucky. She weighs an incredible 200 pounds (91 kg) and stretches up to 20 feet long (6 meters).
The Python reticulatus is an ancient old species of python known to be currently the largest in the snake animal kingdom. They were discovered in Southeast Asia and had an average lifespan of 15-20 years though some have been known to live up to 30 years. The average adult reticulated python usually grows up to 10 to 20 feet long.
Virgin Birth
In 2012 Thelma was documented to have given birth to 6 of her own through the virgin birth. Virgin births requiring no mating have started to become popular amongst animals such as boas, birds, sharks, and more including other snakes!
Fatherless reproduction typically requiring 2 mates to reproduce young is called parthenogenesis. Such a phenomenon occurs when polar bodies, or cells produced with the animal’s egg that usually die or disappear, behave like sperm and fuse with the egg itself.
The recent uproar in Thelma’s virgin birth was never seen before in Pythons until now. Parthenogenesis is still a mystery however it has been hypothesized that geographical isolation from males is a significant factor.
Top facts about Python Snake
- Pythons are non-venomous snakes which means that they won’t poison you if they bite you.
- Pythons are constrictors and kill their prey by grabbing hold of it with their teeth and coiling themselves around it slowly suffocating the life out of it once they have suffocated their prey they will swallow them whole in one go everything apart from the fur and feathers of the prey will be ingested you can tell that a python hasn’t ingested something as it will be found in their poop ly depends on the size of the prey for how long they will take to ingest it larger prey, they can take weeks or months to finally ingest.
- They will tend to eat four to five times a year they find their prey by keeping camouflaged and hidden in trees and bushes they blend very well with their environment they will then use that time to scope out their prey and then ambush it.
- the longest python is the reticulated python which you can measure up to 30 feet long pythons are slow movers and move up to one mile per hour.
- They have heat-sensing organs, that they use to sense where prayer the colors of their skin are usually very similar to the habitat that they reside in they are found in rainforests deserts and savannas of tropical Asia and Africa.
- They won’t attack humans unless they are provoked.
- Pythons are very good swimmers.
- A female python will lay between 12 to 36 eggs and will protect them by coiling herself around them once they are born the mother will leave the nest and the young are left to fend for themselves.
- Pythons can live up to 40 years.
- They are cold-blooded creatures that can increase their body temperature by basking in the sun
