Pythons, though not heavy as some of the boas of South America, are the world's longest snakes.
Pythons and boas provide us with proof that the ancestors of snakes had limbs. The skeletons of these pythons show remains of a hipbone to which tiny bones are attached. A look at the skeletons also shows that the ribs are connected only to the backbone. They can spread apart to allow a whole pig or any animal pass through.
The longest of them all is the Reticulated python which in India, is found only in the Nicobar Islands. This snake reaches a length of 10meters. The only other species found in India is the Indian rock python which grows about 6 meters in length. Amethystine python is only slightly smaller than the reticulated python and reaches about the length of 8 meters.
When a python is hungry it waits for a prey to come by and then strikes its prey with lightning speed. It catches its victim with its sharp teeth and coils its body around it. Then it squeezes the animal to death. Python always swallow their prey whole. A large python can swallow an animal weighing up to fifty kilograms. An African python is known to have swallowed a leopard.
Despite their great ability to swallow they prefer smaller animals like hares and pigeons, and occasionally eat monkeys and jackals.
They rest for several days after a heavy meal and sometimes months pass before they hunt again. In captivity they are known to fast for long periods. Once, in a zoo, a python fastest for two years.
Many species of snakes gives birth to their young ones. But not the pythons. They lay nearly a 100 eggs at a time and merely guard them.
