An Indonesian woman disappeared on her way to work and was later found being digested inside the 22-foot python.
What Happened
A 54-year-old woman identified as Jahrah was on her way to work at the rubber plantation in the Jambi province on the island of Sumatra this past Sunday morning and never returned.
On Sunday night, after her husband reported her missing, a team of men searched for her. The husband found her sandals, headscarf, jacket, and some of the tools she uses at work in the forest.
“When the security team and residents conducted a search around the rubber plantation, then we found a python 7 meters long. It is this snake that is suspected of preying on the victim. After we caught him, we found the victim’s body in the snake’s stomach,” the local police chief, AKP S Harefa, told the Detik news site.
Snake Revealed a Body Inside
A heavily bloated snake was encountered by a search party looking for Jahrah.
The search team killed the reptile and sliced open its stomach, where they discovered Jahrah’s remains completely intact.
“The victim’s body was not destroyed when we found her inside the snake, meaning that she had only been recently swallowed whole,” the police said, after they found the reptile near the village of Betara in Indonesia’s Jambi province, located on Sumatra island.
Pythons Swallowing Humans is Rare
Pythons, which kill through constriction, typically eat smaller animals, swallowing their food whole. Cases of humans being swallowed are rare.
In 2018, a woman was found to have been swallowed by a giant python on the island of Muna, off Sulawesi. She had gone missing in her garden, which was at the base of a rocky cliff where snakes were known to live in caves.
A year earlier, a farmer was killed and swallowed by a giant python in the village of Salubiro, on Sulawesi island.
Snake conservationist Nathan Rusli, director of the Indonesia Herpetofauna Foundation, suspects a reticulated python was likely responsible. The species is the only reptile living in the Sumatran province of Jambi that is large enough to have consumed an adult human, he told The Washington Post.
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