Most People Do Not Believe That a Snake Can Eat Human.

There is a place in Kenya called Makueni in Ukambani that boasts of some of the most dangerous snakes in the world. Very large size python snakes are regularly spotted in the area which usually swallow goats and even children.

But there was this incident where a woman was swallowed by a huge python as she came from fetching water from the river. 

Superstitious people in the area were convinced that this was no ordinary attack and attributed to to some witchcraft spell cast against her. In their minds this was confirmed when several attempts to try and capture or kill the snake with a protruding belly failed. This incident happened in the 1970s but people in the area still remember and shiver with fear when they do.

More recently in Bangladesh in 2003 villagers searching for a missing woman found her body swallowed headfirst by a 10-foot-long python, police reported. Basanti Tripura, 38, was collecting wood in a forest when the python attacked her in Rangamati district, police said.

The snake crushed the woman in its coils and had swallowed her whole body before villagers discoevered the snake with it's belly forming the clear shape of a woman. They retrieved the body after killing the snake with iron rods and sticks, the police official said. Rangamati is a region of forests and rugged hills 135 miles southeast of the nation's capital Dhaka.

Attacks on humans are rare, but pythons have been responsible for several human fatalities, in both the wild and captivity.

Pictures are available that show a python after it swallowed a man with the shape of his body clearly visible. The other photos show the snake after it was cut up to retrieve the dead body of its' victim. It is very unlikely that anybody swallowed by a snake would be found alive inside it because the first thing it does is crash the body and all signs of life.

How does a python manage to swallow something so huge? A snakes' jaw is attached to its braincase by a series of interconnected muscles, tendons and ligaments that enables it to move it side-to-side and front-to-back. The quadrate bone connects the upper jaw with the lower jaw and this connection allows snakes to dislocate their bottom jaws and open their mouths to an astonishing 150-degree angle! Unlike the mouths of humans, muscles enabling them to move their mouths from side-to-side also connect the bones on the side of their mouths and each side can move independently of the other!

This degree of flexibility is how snakes in general are able to open their mouths wide enough to consume prey that is much larger in size.

Source: http://EzineArticles.com