The World's Largest Snake

Green Anaconda
Eunectes murinus


Member of the boa family, South America’s green anaconda is, kilogram for kilogram, the largest snake in the world. Its cousin, our own Indian reticulated python, can reach slightly greater lengths, but the enormous girth of the anaconda makes it almost twice as heavy!

Size
Green anacondas can grow to more than the length of a large bus (8.8 meters), weigh more than 227 kilograms, and measure more than 30 centimetre in diameter. Like in most other reptiles, females are significantly larger than males. Other anaconda species, all from South America and all smaller than the green anaconda, are the yellow, dark-spotted, and Bolivian varieties.

Habitat
Anacondas live in swamps, marshes, and slow-moving streams, mainly in the tropical rain forests of the Amazon and Orinoco river basins. They are slow moving on land, because of their weight, but stealthy and sleek in the water. Their eyes and nasal openings are on top of their heads, allowing them to lay in wait for prey while remaining nearly completely submerged.

Food Habit
They reach their monumental size on a diet of wild pigs, deer, birds, turtles, capybara, and even jaguars. Anacondas are non-venomous constrictors, coiling their muscular bodies around captured prey and squeezing until the animal is not able to breathe. Jaws attached by stretchy ligaments allow them to swallow their prey whole, no matter the size, and they can go weeks or months without food after a big meal.

Click on the image on the side to watch a video of an Anaconda catching the world's largest rodent, Capybara which weigh up to 40 kilogram from National Geographic Television's website.

Reproduction
Female anacondas retain their eggs and give birth to two to three dozen live young. Baby snakes are about 0.6 meters long when they are born and are almost immediately able to swim and hunt. Their lifespan in the wild is about ten years.

Did you know?
While mating, several competing males form a breeding ball around one female which can last up to four weeks. (Click on the image above to see male anacondas forming a breeding ball.)


Speed and Force
Watch the video below to see how fast and with what power (90.05 pounds/ square inch almost like the pressure of a school bus on top of your chest) an anaconda can strike their prey!