The Biggest Snake in the World

Giant snakes have always fascinated.

Between the real monsters of Hollywood cinema (Conan the Barbarian, Harry Potter, ...), those of mythology, and the doctored images circulating on the net, you may ask yourself "but what is really the biggest snake in the world?" 🤔

In this exhaustive article we invite you to discover what is the biggest snake in the world by evoking the three largest species of snakes that our Earth has ever carried.

These reptiles really existed, or still exist today.

The prehistoric monster presented last is absolutely titanic. It is the biggest snake of all time and you will see that it has nothing to envy the monsters of science fiction films.

1) The Green Anaconda

The Largest Snake in the World
Native to the rivers and humid swamps of South America, the Green Anaconda (Eunectes Murinus) is also known as the Giant Anaconda. It is a constrictor snake of the boa family.

Giant anacondas deserve their place here because they are the heaviest snakes in the world today. According to herpetologists, some females (much larger than males) can reach a length of 9 meters and weigh more than 200 kilograms for the largest specimens. The latter can then reach a ventral circumference of almost one meter! 😨

The Anaconda: a Large Aquatic Snake
They are mainly aquatic snakes rather than terrestrial ones. Their enormous weight makes them rather clumsy on land. But they are incredibly stealthy in the water, remaining motionless until their prey comes within range.

Wild anacondas spend most of their time in rivers searching for food. They are somewhat shy, solitary creatures, and are not easy to spot. 🔍

It is the anaconda's ability to remain partially hidden in the water that makes it difficult to accurately find (and document) a specimen that exceeds the current world record. Indeed, it is difficult to estimate the length of a specimen seen swimming.

The Fearsome Giant Snake of the Amazon
Like boa constrictors 🐍, giant anacondas do not generally bite, even though they have powerful jaws. They have no neurotoxic venom and no fangs. They are carnivorous and kill their prey by suffocating or drowning them. Anacondas use their teeth to hold on to their prey to prevent them from escaping.

They wrap their large, powerful bodies around their victims, compressing them between their coils until they suffocate or are crushed. After this deadly embrace 💀, the snake "unhooks" its jaws and swallows its victim whole. The digestion of prey varies depending on its size and can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days.

Anacondas are much more likely to eat aquatic creatures, such as fish. They have been known to occasionally eat caimans (a relative of the alligator 🐊), other snakes, deer, and even jaguars.

Anacondas are relatively slow-moving snakes, so they must rely on stealth and the element of surprise to catch unsuspecting prey.

The danger of anacondas for humans is real given their size. But we are far from the killer snake. It is possible to be bitten by an anaconda, but the bite itself would not be fatal.

Giant Snake of Brazil... Beware of Fake News!
According to some historical reports, the first European explorers of the South American jungle would have seen giant anacondas measuring up to 30 meters long 😰. Some of the local indigenous peoples have reported seeing anacondas measuring up to 15 meters.

Note that when the skin of a dead anaconda is spread out, it can be stretched very easily. It can thus extend to much greater lengths than the snake itself when it was alive.

Reports of large anacondas that cannot be verified are usually due to misperceptions, disproportionately stretched snake skin, or incorrect measurement.

People are generally very bad at estimating length ❌, especially for large snakes. In fact, it appears that the larger the snake, the greater the margin of error.

For example, in 2016 in Brazil near the Belo Monte plant, a video and several photos reported that an anaconda with titanic measurements: ten meters and 400kg 🥇 was found on a construction site. The photo of this monster caught by an excavator went viral. But it was later proven that the whole thing was a hoax.

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 What was the largest snake ever found?

 The largest snake ever found is the Titanoboa, an extinct species that lived around 60 million years ago during the Paleocene epoch. It was discovered in a coal mine in Colombia in 2009.

The Titanoboa cerrejonensis is estimated to have been around 42 to 47 feet (12.8 to 14.3 meters) long and weighed approximately 2,500 pounds (1,135 kilograms). It was significantly larger than any modern snake, making it the longest and heaviest snake known to have ever existed.

Among living species, the reticulated python (Python reticulatus) holds the record for the longest snake, with one specimen measured at 33 feet (10 meters), while the green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) is considered the heaviest, with some individuals weighing over 550 pounds (250 kilograms).

Is Titanoboa bigger than anaconda?

2) The Reticulated Python

The Largest Snake in the World Alive
The Reticulated Python (often confused with the Burmese python or the royal python) is the longest snake existing today. This snake (scientific name: Malayopython Reticulatus) is from the Pythonidae family. The largest snake in the world can reach the record size of 10 meters and weigh 140kg. These are the dimensions of a female found in Celebes, an island in northern Indonesia 🗺️.

Living in Southeast Asia, this snake can be found in tropical forests, grasslands and edges. Specimens have also been seen off the coast, this ophidian being an excellent swimmer. A hell of a sea snake!

The reticulated python is a hunter that lies in ambush in trees or in swamp water to surprise its prey. Then it suffocates and kills them by constriction. It feeds mainly on medium-sized mammals, rodents, large lizards and birds 🐦. Its prey is generally a quarter of its size but weighs more than it.

Medusa: The World's Largest Captured and Captive Snake
Medusa is the name of a 7-year-old female. She is 25 feet long and weighs 400 pounds. She was born and spent her life in captivity, raised and cared for by Larry Edgar, a snake handler. She entered the Guinness World Records, the Guinness Book of Records, at the end of October 2011 as the longest snake ever held in captivity 🏆.

This exotic snake is owned by Full Moon Productions, and lives in the Edge of Hell haunted house in Kansas City. It is one of the main attractions because this haunted house (one of the scariest in the world 😱) is focused on various phobias. What could be better than a huge snake to make visitors shiver?

Just like zoo snakes, Medusa's main diet consists of a combination of rabbits, pigs, rats and deer, which are served to her every two weeks.

The Largest Snake in the Entire World: a Man-Eater?
It is not uncommon for Asian reticulated pythons to approach residential areas located on the edge of forests to find food or to escape the disappearance of their habitat 🌳. Their diet can then include dogs, cats and chickens.

However, attacks on humans remain extremely rare because pythons are not aggressive towards humans. Very often, it is fear that pushes humans to attack such a snake when they come across it, in order to kill it or drive it away ⚔️. This is how tragedies can occur.

Two attacks have caused a lot of noise in recent years:

• In 2017, the body of a villager in Indonesia was found inside a 7-meter-long python.
• In 2018, the body of a woman was found in an 8-meter-long animal.

Despite their size and unpredictability, pythons remain pets that are very popular with terrarium enthusiasts and owners of exotic snakes. It is possible to adopt one, if you have a large enough terrarium ✔️. What a pet...

Is the biggest snake in the world alive?

The biggest snake in the world, referring to the Titanoboa, is not alive. Titanoboa lived around 60 million years ago and has been extinct for millions of years. It holds the title of the largest snake ever known, measuring up to 42 to 47 feet (12.8 to 14.3 meters) long.

However, the largest living snake is the reticulated python (Python reticulatus) in terms of length, with some individuals reaching lengths of up to 30 feet (9 meters). The green anaconda (Eunectes murinus) holds the record for the heaviest living snake, with some specimens weighing over 500 pounds (227 kilograms). While these living snakes are incredibly large, they are much smaller than the extinct Titanoboa.

What is the world's largest snake 100 feet?

3) Titanoboa Cerrejoensis

The Biggest and Largest Snake in the World

According to paleontologists, this gigantic ophidian would be the largest species of snake that has ever existed on Earth 🌎. But how big is the largest snake in the world? This prehistoric snake was a creature that could reach 16 meters in length and weigh more than two tons. A real monster!

To determine the size and weight of this creature, scientists used the mathematical relationship between the size of the vertebrae and the length of the body in living snakes.

The Titanoboa is said to have lived 60 million years ago. About 6 million years after Tyrannosaurus Rex 🦖 disappeared. Many believe that the Titanoboa "is the T-rex of its time".

A Prehistoric Predatory Snake
Scientists believe that Titanoboa was the most dangerous predator of its time ⚠️, despite the fact that the fauna was then composed of tropical mega-predators fighting for supremacy.

It behaved like an anaconda and thus spent most of its time in the water, killing its prey with its titanic strength.

The structure of its jaw suggests that it had a fearsome bite. Its many teeth of a few centimeters suggest that it was also very adept at catching fish 🐟. But this giant snake probably also fed on giant crocodiles and turtles of 1.5 meters in diameter, which it could swallow whole.

The Discovery of Titanoboa Fossils
In 2002, excavations were launched in a coal mine in Colombia after the discovery of a fossilized leaf 🍃 belonging to an ancient tropical forest of the Paleocene. This was followed by expeditions led by the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and the Florida Museum of Natural History.

In 2009, fossilized vertebrae of a previously unknown species of snake were found. So large that it defied imagination.

Snake fossils are mainly made up of vertebrae. Their skulls are almost never found because they are extremely fragile and disintegrate over time. And let's not even talk about molting. But this time, scientists managed to discover fragments of three Titanoboa skulls. This allowed them to deduce what this ancient cold-blooded giant looked like 🦴.

The fossilized remains also revealed that after the extinction of the dinosaurs, the tropics were warmer than they are today. They thus saw the birth of the South American rainforest (now the Amazon).

Titanoboa: Monster Snake, the Movie
The discovery of this enormous snake was even the origin of a two-hour film: TITANOBOA: MONSTER SNAKE. 🎥

This film traces the existence of this monstrous snake and its discovery by scientists. The Titanoboa is also brought back to life in superb computer-generated images.

A replica of Titanoboa 🐍, scientifically accurate and life-size, appears in the film and is exhibited for the first time at the National Museum of Natural History on March 30, 2012 (see photo above).

An animal that, until now, has only populated fiction and nightmares, but which can finally be presented as a wonder of nature.

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Is Titanoboa still alive in 2024?

No, the Titanoboa is not alive in 2024. Titanoboa went extinct around 60 million years ago, shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs. Fossils of this giant snake were discovered in Colombia in 2009, providing evidence of its existence during the Paleocene epoch.

While modern large snakes like the reticulated python and green anaconda still exist, the Titanoboa itself has been extinct for millions of years.

Excerpt from the movie Titanoboa: Monster Snake. (Smithsonian Channel)

This duel between Titanoboa and T rex is purely fanciful: several million years separate the existence of these two creatures. 🙃

But it perfectly illustrates how much giant beasts fascinate on screen (sometimes even in spite of reality, it's true).

Conclusion on Giant Snakes
Contrary to what many think, these animals almost never attack humans. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, only a few deaths per year are due to constrictor snakes. Although less impressive, bites from venomous snakes like the black mamba, the viper or the king cobra are actually much more dangerous for humans ☠️.

In reality, the Anaconda and the Python are hunted for their scales. So it is rather the hunters who are a danger to them. These species are also threatened.

Fake news is numerous on the net because anomalies in nature are fascinating. And the internet does not care whether a given example is real or false 🤷. Some do not hesitate to play on the fear of snakes anchored in humans since the dawn of time to attract attention.

This is why sometimes testimonies emerge about the existence of a bloodthirsty snake the size of a football field 😂. Often these stories lack tangible evidence and are content with a shaky photo montage. Stories of giant snakes have nothing to envy stories of sea monsters.

What killed the Titanoboa?

Dive into the fascinating world of snakes and explore our other articles now!

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