Reticulated Python

The Reticulated Python has the title of being the world's longest snake, even before the Green Anaconda (although Anacondas grow heavier and are larger in girth, Retics still get the cake when it comes to shere length); they're able to reach almost 7 metres, although such large individuals are very rare. The record is currently held by a captive Reticulated Python named Medusa who measures 7,67 metres. Most interestingly, despite (or perhaps rather because of) their huge size, these snakes can go very long times without eating, the record being 23 months.

They're absurdly beautiful pythons with an unmistakeable net pattern (which is what their common name is referring to). Like the King Cobra, Retics are believed to be one of the most intelligent snakes and have a reputation of being unpredictable and highly aggressive in nature (males are reported to engage in fights over mates that can cause serious, sometimes even lethal wounds). However, they have been kept and bred for many years in captivity (resulting in many fascinating colour morphs) and captive bred individuals can get surprisingly tame and docile if conditioned and handled at a very young age. Just as it is with other Asian pythons, the majority of first captive retics established in the United States actually originated from Thailand.

Unlike many other large constrictors, Retics are active hunters and they are among the very few snakes (if not even the only one) who actually prey on humans, with large specimens being able to kill and swallow them whole; the latest report is from 2018, where the body of an Indonesian woman (who went missing prior) was found completely intact inside a python after villagers caught it and cut it open.

Reticulated Pythons are very common all over Thailand and surprisingly a highly synanthropic species; they can be found in places as unlikely as big megacities like Bangkok (with numerous cases of unpleasant encounters with individuals crawling out of the toilet). They're also excellent swimmers and well adapted to water; thus, the Reticulated Python was one of the first big animals to reinhabit the volcanic island Krakatoa after its eruption and complete destruction in 1883.

Most surprisingly, the Reticulated Python is also one of the few known snakes that are able to reproduce via parthenogenesis, as the case of Thelma showed. In 2012 at the Louisville Zoo in Kentucky, a captive female Reticulated Python called Thelma would suddenly give birth to offspring without any former encounter with a male.