They are very well camouflaged in the swamps and bogs in which they thrive. They are solitary creatures that are somewhat shy and not many of them are easily seen. If you've seen the stories circulating around the Internet about the world's biggest snake being held in captivity in Indonesia (back in 2003), then get the straight dope on .Īnacondas in the wild spend most of their time hanging out in rivers hunting for their food. Anacondas in the jungles of South America can grow as big around as a grown man! Even though the longest python is longer than the record-holding anaconda, the girth of the anaconda is far bigger. The python holds the world's record for length of a snake, with the longest ever measured at 33 feet. The other snake that competes with the anaconda is the Asiatic Reticulated Python ( Python reticulatus). She wasn't weighed at the time she was caught, but scientists estimate that she must have weighed over 500 lbs. The largest anaconda ever measured was almost 28 feet long with a girth of 44 inches.

The dimensions that have earned the anaconda the title of king is its total body mass or its weight (the sheer physical bulk of it). Put your hands together for Eunectes murinus, aka the biggest snake in the world, the green anaconda.If you look in the records there is a lot of controversy over which snake holds the world's record for massive size. Some catch live bats on the fly some play dead a few of them even glide down from treetops like skinny parachuters.Īnd in our post- Titanoboa world, the reigning heavyweight champion, the bulkiest living snake, is another South American river giant. Today, you and I share this planet with more than 3,000 recognized snake species. That would make it the largest known snake of all time.īut needless to say, a lot of things have changed over the past 58 million years. Judging by the available remains, it seems Titanoboa could have probably weighed over 1.25 tons (over 1.13 metric tons) and surpassed 42 feet (12.8 meters) in length. They paint a striking image of the long-extinct creature. Although nobody's ever found a complete skeleton, paleontologists have an assortment of Titanoboa fossils to go on, including ribs, backbones and pieces of skull. What we do know is that Titanoboa was absolutely, positively gigantic.

Largest anaconda ever seen