BEHAVIOUR OF PYTHONS

Press, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 26874, 29 October 1952, Page 6

BEHAVIOUR OF PYTHONS

FILM DISPROVES OLD BELIEFS

(From a Reuter Correspondent.) PRETORIA.

A film taken in the Kruger National Park this season h§.s upset a number of hitherto widely held beliefs about the behaviour of the python. It has. for example, shattered the theory that a python always crushed the bones of its larger victims, such as antelope. It also shows that the python begins to swallow its victim head first and not hind-quarters first, and that it does not necessarily smear it all over with a slimy secretion before beginning to make a meal of it The film was taken by Mr R. J. Labuschagne, the National Parks information officer, who came across a grassy spot where an impala was still vainly kicking its hind legs as it lay entangled in the coils of a 16-foot python. The snake had apparently dropped on its victim as it was feeding under a tree. Disturbed by the filming, the python, which had already swallowed the head and shoulders of the impala. later released its victim and glided off up a tree. Dr. Nel, a biologist who had accompanied Mr Labuschagne. examined the dead impala and found that not a single bone had been broxen, although the men themselves had seen the python coil itself round the impala before it began to swallow it. Death, he said, resulted entirely from asphyxiation, without any bone crushing.

The film also shows the exact manner in which a python climbs trees. It keeps pushing itself up from below with a sudden stiffening of its tremendous muscles.