First, the good news: snakes rarely eat humans. But it does happen and Indonesia seems to be a particular hotspot for it. Over the past decade, several people in the country have been killed and swallowed whole by pythons, including a 45-year-old woman who was found fully clothed inside a bloated, 5m-long (16ft) snake.
Non-venomous snakes such as pythons and boas kill their prey by ambushing it, gripping with their backward-curving teeth and coiling their powerful bodies around it. This pressure cuts off the blood supply to vital organs, including the brain, and the prey becomes unconscious before dying in a matter of minutes or even seconds.
The snake then swallows its victim whole, headfirst. Snakes have specially adapted skulls that allow them to swallow animals much wider than their heads – their lower jaws, for instance, are made up of two separate halves joined by a stretchy ligament. Muscles along the snake’s digestive tract move the prey into the stomach for digestion, where it can remain for days, or even weeks, as powerful acids and enzymes break it down.
A snake’s diet will depend on its size, ranging from insects, rodents, birds and lizards to monkeys, pigs, deer and even alligators. Humans present a particular challenge, as our shoulder blades are generally too wide for a snake to wrap its jaws around, but smaller adults and children are possible meals for the largest snakes.
A snake would take as much as a month to digest you, including your teeth and bones (researchers recently discovered a specialised type of intestinal cell in pythons that helps them process the large amounts of calcium and phosphorus from dissolved bones). Snakes can’t digest the keratin protein, however, so your hair and nails would remain. Also, the snake wouldn’t be able to digest any clothes you’re wearing, so that could create problems as it tries to eat you.
This article is an answer to the question (asked by Lilian Hart, Southampton) 'What would happen if I got eaten by a python?'
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