Snakes on Plains – Part Deux

Various readers from part one of this blog, Snakes on Plains, wanted to see some of the following images, spanning one hundred years of giant snakes.

In 1906, twenty years before explorer Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett vanished without a trace in the Amazon, he was sent by the Royal Geographic Society to make a thorough survey of the Rio Abuna and Acre Rivers. Thirty-nine at the time, Major Fawcett, as Ivan T. Sanderson once observed, was known for two sometimes contradictory character traits: he was a dreamer whose dreams led him to envision lost jungle cities of fantastic wealth and splendor; he was also a scrupulously matter-of-fact military man who reported exactly what he saw in detailed and down-to-earth observations. His adventures inspired the fiction of H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conon Doyle (especially The Lost World). Fawcett’s memoirs, striking for their contrast of visionary dreams and earthy rankness, relate many strange adventure – including an encounter with a giant anaconda of the Amazon.

Fawcett ran across the giant snake in 1907. He was drifting along the Rio Negro with his Indian crew, when he spotted the snake. Fawcett reported that a great triangular head appeared at the bow of the boat, and when he shot the creature in the spine the body of the snake thrashed the water all around the boat. With great difficulty Fawcett convinced his crew to approach closer to the bank where the great snake lay. The Indians feared that the injured reptile would attack the boat or that its mate, as often happened, would come to destroy the hunters.

Fawcett then stepped onto the shore and cautiously approached the snake. According to Fawcett, the snake measured 45 feet out of the water and 17 in it, for a total of 62 feet. (Thanks to pp for images.)

This is the giant snake photograph shown on Arthur C. Clarke’s documentary, Mysterious Universe. It allegedly was taken by Belgian helicopter pilot Remy Van Lierde during a patrol over a river in the Republic of Congo in 1959. The snake was estimated to 40-50 feet long, with a 3 feet wide head. It reportedly lifted itself 10 feet into the air towards the chopper. Van Lierde said it was a dark shade of brown and green with a white underbelly. (Thanks to lol, cw, and ba for photo assistance.)

Finally, from August 11, 2006, Seth Pickett (from left), Clayton Grahm and Joey Woodruff, three Hamilton County boaters, hold the 19-foot python they discovered on the banks of the White River near Strawtown, a community north of Noblesville, Indiana. — Tim Miller / Indianapolis Star (Credit: Chad Arment)

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

Email • Facebook • Twitter •