There are literally hundreds of ways your life can come to an end.
Disease, accident, natural causes or maybe dying in your sleep to mention a few.
Most of us try to avoid thinking about it, but if we do, the one thing we would probably
agree on is that however we meet our death, hopefully it’s a painless one.
But not all deaths are painless, and today we’re going to explore one of the worst
ways to exit the land of the living.
Welcome to this episode of The Infographics Show, People who have been eaten alive.
When you research this subject online, there is one story that comes up in Google searches
on a number of articles and that’s the case of Wa Tiba, a 54 year old Indonesian woman
who has killed and swallowed whole by a 23 foot (7m) long python, in June this year.
What exactly happened to this unfortunate lady?
Wa Tiba went missing while checking on her vegetable garden on Muna Island in the Sulawesi
province of Indonesia.
It’s hard to know for sure how she spent her final moments but locals searched high
and low until eventually they came across her sandals and machete.
It was then that they spotted a giant python with a bloated belly lying nearby.
Local police chief Hamka told news outlet AFP "Residents were suspicious the snake swallowed
the victim, so they killed it, then carried it out of the garden.
The snake's belly was cut open and the body of the victim was found inside."
You can find some gruesome online footage showing the woman's body being cut out of
the snakes belly in front of a large crowd.
That’s a frightening story and what makes it even more so is that it’s not the first.
We found there are a few cases where people have been eaten and swallowed alive by monster
pythons and Indonesia looks to be a hotspot for the activity.
According to a 2015 article in National Geographic magazine, the body of 25-year-old Akbar Salubiro,
who worked on a palm oil plantation on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi was also cut
from the guts of a 23-foot-long snake.
How does a snake consume something as large as a fully-grown man?
Firstly these snakes are huge, growing over 20 feet long and weighing more than one hundred
pounds, and once they have hold of a person they go for the kill.
Pythons and other constricting snakes kill by cutting off the blood flow in their victim’s
body.
A python's powerful squeeze can end blood flow to the heart within seconds.
"The heart literally doesn't have enough strength to push against the pressure," explained Scott
Boback, a vertebrate ecologist at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, who spoke
to National Geographic.
Pythons have been known to eat some very large animals, such as crocodiles, hyenas, and even
other large snakes.
In 2005, a python in Florida even tried to eat an entire alligator, which resulted in
it bursting.
So seems their eyes are sometimes too big for their bellies!
You could argue that this is not really being eaten alive as the snake must first kill their
victim but it’s still a pretty grizzly end.
The word grizzly, brings us to the subject of grizzly bears, which are occasionally in
the news for attacks on people.
But are there any cases of people being eaten alive?
One story of an attack by a Grizzly is that of Mr. Treadwell, 46, and Miss Huguenard,
37, who in 2003 were found dead in Katmai National Park, Alaska.
The couple had been camping in a remote area of 1.6 million hectare park.
Mr. Treadwell, 46, was described as a bear expert who often spoke about his adventures
with the animals on television and in schools.
So his risk of being mauled was higher than most as he deliberately put himself in reach
of these deadly animals.
On the fateful day Treadwell had been recording with his video recorder and though there was
no footage captured, the police were able to piece together the couples final moments
as the audio was running.
The sound only recording ran for a full six minutes "They're both screaming, she's telling
him to play dead, then it changes to fighting back.
He asks her to hit the bear," Police Trooper Chris Hill said.
"There's so much noise going on.
I don't know what's him and what might be an animal.
It's pretty disturbing.
I keep hearing it in my mind."
When we think about stories of being eaten alive for most of us the word shark also comes
to mind.
The 1975 fictional movie Jaws about a great white shark that terrorized and killed a number
of people at a seaside town helped to popularize this notion, but is there any truth behind
the stories?
It’s hard to get exact numbers of shark attacks for the majority of Third World coastal
nations, as there is no method in place for reporting suspected shark attacks.
But to look at the US statistics, a person's chance of getting attacked by a shark is 1
in 11.5 million, and a person's chance of getting killed by a shark is less than 1 in
264.1 million.
So a very low number indeed.
But when you think of killer sharks Australia nearly always comes to mind and for good reason.
According to Wikipedia there have been 72 shark attacks that have resulted in death
in the last 45 years, compared to 35 in America.
So how about some real cases?
The most recent one we could find was neither in Australia or America.
There was a man killed only last month while swimming in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt.
The area is a popular tourist destination and according news site, The Daily Star, holidaymakers
have been warned that swimming in deep waters can increase the risk of attack.
The remains of the tourist, who is thought to be Czech, were found on Marsa Alam beach.
The chairman General of Marsa Alam city council, Atef Wagdy, explained that the environment
ministry has set up a committee to investigate the death and the health ministry was handing
over the body to the Czech Republic embassy.
"There is no problem in diving," said Mr. Wagdy, but he also explained that swimming
on the surface of deep water can be dangerous and make people prone to attack.
Another case we found of being eaten alive is the shocking story of Frank Herrmann, a
56-year-old German homeless man who was living under a bridge in Majorca.
He was found trying to crawl out from under the bridge and doctors discovered he had been
covered in rat bites and that he had been partially eaten.
It looked like he had been trying to defend himself when the rats took hold.
He was taken to hospital but died from organ failure.
This article was published in the International Business Times in 2013, but we also found
a few counter arguments on Quora claiming that the story may be exaggerated.
So it’s hard to know how much the rats were responsible or whether the living conditions
also added to Herrmann’s unfortunate end.
Whatever the truth, the last thing you would want is rats gnawing at your body when you
are close to death.
So we’ve covered snakes, bears, sharks and even rats.
What else have people known to be eaten alive by?
We also found the story of Rebecca Zeni, a former model who died in 2015 at age 93, at
her Georgia nursing home.
An autopsy report revealed she had died from scabies during her stay there.
What are scabies I hear you ask?
Scabies is not an infection, but an infestation.
Tiny mites that make their home in the outer layers of human skin.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “the microscopic scabies
mite burrows into the upper layer of the skin where it lives and lays its eggs.”
Each female mite can lay between 10 and 25 eggs so once you are infested, these creepy
crawlies can spread rapidly.
The official report stated that Zeni’s cause of death was "septicemia due to crusted scabies."
Not a pleasant way to die and we couldn’t find any other cases of death by scabies,
so a rare way for life to end.
So, do you know other stories of people being eaten alive?
Let us know in the comments.
Also be sure to check out our other video, Do This If You Are Attacked By a Lion.
Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe.
See you next time!