Giant Snake

A NATIONAL PARK in Indonesia is displaying a 15-metre python - making it the longest ever captured - that was revered as a tribal ruler and has a huge appetite for dogs.

The huge, dark-coloured male snake has a diameter of 85 centimetres, weighs 447 kg and is 14.85 metres long, according to keepers of an animal exhibition at the Curugsewu park in the small Central Java town of Kendal.

Snake handler Imam Darmanto said the nameless serpent likes to gulp down dogs.

'This snake swallows up dogs. In a month, it can eat around five dogs,' he said.

According to the Guinness World Records, the longest discovered snake was also a reticulated python from Indonesia. It was 10 metres long when found in Sulawesi island in 1912.

Darmanto found the reticulated python last year, but it took months to get permission from the villagers on Sumatra island, where it had been caught and kept in captivity by villagers, who revered the creature, to bring it to Java.

'It was seen as the ruler of the Kubu tribe. So, we had to go by the book and the tourism authorities had to ask for it,' Darmanto said.

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