Wildest Wildlife Sightings published the video below, which shows a huge Southern African python slithering slowly across a road in Kruger National Park, and then disappearing into a hole in the tarmac.
Although not as action-packed as footage of an elephant charging a rhino and her calf, there is something mesmerising and at the same time, skin-crawling watching South Africa’s largest snake disappear into the earth.
Like all pythons, this snake is not venomous, but it can deliver a nasty bite. To catch its prey, which can vary from birds and fish to small antelope, monkeys and even crocodiles, the African rock python ambushes its victim and wraps its body around the creature in coils. It then proceeds to tighten its coils each time the prey breathes out until the animal dies, usually from cardiac arrest.
According to the South African Snake Bite Institute, the Southern African python (which used to be considered a subspecies of the African rock python, but is now recognised as its own species) is our largest snake by far, ‘reaching a maximum length of around 5.5m and weighing around 65kg’.
Attacks on humans are extremely rare.
