You might think monstrous serpents like these are things of myth and legend,
However, believe it or not, snakes the size of buses once existed on our planet!
But what is the largest a snake can be today,
why were they so big and
could these prehistoric sized monsters make a comeback?
You’ll be surprised at some of the answers!
I’m Stu this is Debunked and we’re here to
sort the truths from the myths and the facts from the misconceptions.
On your own quest for reptilian based reasoning you may have
come across this image on Google Earth. This ‘fossil’ off of the coast of France
regularly slithers through various social channels
claiming to be the skeleton of a giant snake, but it is in fact
an art installation called Serpent d'océan that’s been there since 2012.
Go a little deeper and actually Google “Biggest Snake” and you’ll,
hopefully find yourself watching excellent educational content like this,
but most likely your feed will be full of fantastical photos claiming to show the
biggest snake ever caught on camera - as you can imagine the majority of these are utter nonsense.
Take this one from 2010, now that snake is real! But this is all just trickery of perspective.
Look closer and you’ll see those soldiers and vehicles are all just toys.
Even so called ‘factual’ channels on YouTube present these sorts of fake images as real!
So while you're here with us, like, subscribe and turn on your notifications
so that your feed will contain authentic educational entertainment instead!
Aside from the photo fakes and inaccurately reported news cluttering the internet,
Hollywood would also have you believe the longest recorded
snake of modern times is the iconic Anaconda,
but in fact , and this is where we really start firing those fact hungry synapses,
the longest species of snake is a Python.
The Reticulated Python or Malayopython reticulatus to be more precise.
These enormous ophidians usually measure an impressive 6.25 meters,
or over twenty feet, which is longer than a giraffe is tall!
But back in 1912 the current world record holder was discovered in Celebes,
or Sulawesi as it is now known in Indonesia.
and measured a whopping ten meters, nearly thirty three feet! That’s as
long as a telegraph or utility pole is tall, and almost the length of a full sized school bus!
But, we’re here to talk about the
BIGGEST, and pound for pound, or kilo for kilo depending on where you slither from,
the Green Anaconda or Eunectes murinus outsizes our reticulated wriggler. While the average
specimen of this species may only measure five and a half to just over six meters,
in Brazil back in 1960, or thereabouts,
the world record holder for heaviest snake was
discovered measuring eight and half meters, nearly thirty foot!
While she may come up short compared to the
longest python her girth of 1.1 meters or 44 inches meant
she weighed a whopping two hundred and twenty seven kilograms or five hundred pounds!
In 2016 a news story was widely circulated, by even trusted sources, that a Brazilian
construction crew had unearthed the world’s biggest snake a 10 meter,
32 foot Anaconda weighing 400 400 kilograms or 880 lbs, this sadly later turned out to
be a hoax comprised of a variety of photos of different snakes.
So, while Anacondas as big as the monster movies may be a thing of movie myth,
if we travel back around 58 million years to the Palaeocene Epoch era during the Paleogene Period,
we will find the sort of behemoth we’ve all been waiting for.
Here roaming along the earth’s equator we find the Titanoboa cerrejonensis!
In total twenty eight fossils of this species of Boa have been uncovered in La Guajira, Colombia.
The evidence has revealed that these animals grew up to 15 meters long, and measured 1 meter across,
meaning if this thing slithered passed you it would likely come up to your hips or even higher!
These impressive measurements mean that these colossal creatures could have
weighed on average over one thousand one hundred kilograms or 2500 pounds,
that’s five times bigger than the biggest Anaconda! However,
estimates mean that larger examples of this titan could have weighed even more!
“The snake’s body was so wide that if it were moving down the hall and decided
to come into my office to eat me, it would literally have to squeeze through the door.”
These estimates are based on a fossilized vertebrae which
scientists believe to be from the snake's widest portion,
but if it isn’t from that section then these colossal snakes could have been even bigger!
At the time it was, unsurprisingly, believed to be the largest predator
to roam across the Earth, splitting its time between land and water habitats.
The Titanoboa is likely to have been an expert ambush predator,
quietly waiting in the shallows before springing a surprise attack on its prey.
The jaws of this giant could open 1.8 meters, nearly 6 feet wide,
and its preferred diet is likely to have consisted of prehistoric relatives of
the crocodile! However it was also partial to a giant turtle or two.
As terrifying as it may have been, it was not venomous, but with the majority of its
body consisting of constricting muscle it would have instead crushed its prey
to death. As thrilling as this image is, sadly the T-rex died out around 6 million
years prior to the Titanoboa’s existence so this battle would never have taken place.
But how, and why did this beastly boa grow to be so big, and why are their
descendents not roaming the earth today chowing down on a croc or two for lunch?
Well during the Palaeocene Epoch era 66 to 56 million years ago
the climate would have been a lot warmer than it is today.
And that would have been very beneficial
to cold-blooded vertebrates like these animals.
Ectothermic creatures derive their body temperature from the environmental temperature.
Whereas, warm blooded or endothermic animals like us
derive our body temperature from the food we eat.
For a snake, when the temperature is low their metabolism slows down,
and below a certain point it simply won’t function.
At the time the Titanoboa lived the average global climate was around
ten degrees Fahrenheit nearly six degrees celsius hotter!
So this warmer climate would have allowed these super snakes to spend more time obtaining large
quantities of food and energy, and in turn growing larger and larger.
"The result was, among other things, the largest snakes the world has ever seen."
You may be wondering whether the current situation
with increasing global temperatures could again lead to monstrously large serpents?
And the answer is… yes! …in theory. But that’s a whole other video that’s coming up soon!
Thanks for watching and if you enjoyed this video please like and subscribe and make
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