Story By: John Feng, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Asia Wire Report
This is the moment a giant 13-foot python regurgitates a villager’s 88-pound goat moments after swallowing the prey whole and then being forced to cough it up.
Goatherds Mr and Ms Yao, who are from the village of Longju in Anxi County in East China’s Fujian Province, went looking for the predator after yet another one of their livestock went missing.
Video Credit: AsiaWire
Mr Yao said: “Our goats kept going missing since the beginning of this year. We’ve lost 20-odd so far.
“I had a feeling something was eating them, then we found the large snake in the mountains near our flock.”
Footage of the reptile – believed to be a Burmese python (Python bivittatus) – can be seen curled up in the bushing and attempting to digest its dinner when the villagers barge in on 1st September.
The animal weighing 32.5 kilogrammes (71 lb) and measuring more than 4 metres (13 feet) in length had swallowed Mr Yao’s goat – itself weighing 40 kilogrammes (88 lb) – whole, and the couple wanted it back.
Picture Credit: AsiaWire
Mr Yao said: “Its stomach was huge. I knew it had eaten my goat, so I called the police.
“We lifted it by its tail, and it spent the next hour spitting it out.”
Video shows a villager holding the snake by its tail and the animal slowing regurgitating the dead goat from its jaws.
The lifeless goat is then pictured covered in the python’s digestive fluids, having been asphyxiated to death and then swallowed.
Mr Yao said the snake was captured by members of the county forestry bureau, who will reportedly rehabilitate the animal before releasing it back into the wild.
Burmese pythons belong to a state-protected species in China, where the poaching or capturing of the animals is prohibited and punishable by law.
The ViralTab page is created by and dedicated to professional, independent freelance journalists. It is a place for us to showcase our work. When our news is sold to our media partners, we will include the link here.
