Big Snake - Ate full-grown impala ewe - Yum Yum!

As pointed out in the next post, this story was wrong.

An Australian sheep farmer was puzzled at the disappearance of sheep on his farm. the farmer decided to put up an electric fence. This is what he found:

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This is still one big snake. Thanks for the correction Jim.

Muleskinner said:

An Australian sheep farmer was puzzled at the disappearance of sheep on
his farm. the farmer decided to put up an electric fence. This is what
he found:

Click to expand...

Here's the actual source:https://www.bushveld.co.za/pictures-python.htm (warning: graphic photos of the snake slit open) The snake was found to have a full-grown impala ewe in its gullet. It actually happened in South Africa. The pictures of the snake apparently trying to bite the fence are misleading; the snake was "posed" that way in order to show the open mouth. It was electrocuted as it tried to squeeze under the fence, being significantly larger in girth than when it entered.

Muleskinner said:

As pointed out in the next post, this story was wrong.
This is still one big snake. Thanks for the correction Jim.

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No problem. It's interesting that photos of bizarre and amazing phenomena get circulated with different stories attached to them. Someone mailed me the same photos a week or so ago, with the same sheep/Australia story, and I checked it out and found the link I posted. snopes.com is an excellent source for verifying these types of things.

Get your facts first...

JSW05 said:

No problem. It's interesting that photos of bizarre and amazing phenomena get circulated with different stories attached to them. Someone mailed me the same photos a week or so ago, with the same sheep/Australia story, and I checked it out and found the link I posted. snopes.com is an excellent source for verifying these types of things.

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Thanks for the reminder about snopes.com. Always worth verification before posting something for the record.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. Mark Twain

I like your signature quote.

I have a hard time believing the teeth in the picture aren't doctored up, could be wrong though. I did a quick search and came up with nothing. I was under the assumption that constrictors had teeth no more than a 1/8" long.

Cordon said:

I have a hard time believing the teeth in the picture aren't doctored up, could be wrong though. I did a quick search and came up with nothing. I was under the assumption that constrictors had teeth no more than a 1/8" long.

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Interesting. I did a quick search too, and the first site I saw said, unequivocally, that African rock pythons have no fangs. Then I went to the San Diego Zoo site and found (scroll down, look in the sidebar on the left) this:

Pythons have four rows of teeth in their upper jaw. They also have fangs, but they do not produce venom.

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So I don't know. It's possible that the snake in the photo is some sort of viper, I suppose, and has been misidentified. I don't think the photos have been doctored, though. Is there a herpetologist in the house?

It looks like it's a matter of terminology, with "fang" being defined (by snake experts) as a medium of venom injection, so by definition, non-venomous snakes don't have fangs. They might, however, have teeth. This is from the (broken link removed) site:

The African rock python can inflict very deep wounds due to long, curved teeth.

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That’s what I get for assuming!