Various readers from part one of this blog, Snakes on Plains, wanted to see some of the following images, spanning one hundred years of giant snakes.

In 1906, twenty years before explorer Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett vanished without a trace in the Amazon, he was sent by the Royal Geographic Society to make a thorough survey of the Rio Abuna and Acre Rivers. Thirty-nine at the time, Major Fawcett, as Ivan T. Sanderson once observed, was known for two sometimes contradictory character traits: he was a dreamer whose dreams led him to envision lost jungle cities of fantastic wealth and splendor; he was also a scrupulously matter-of-fact military man who reported exactly what he saw in detailed and down-to-earth observations. His adventures inspired the fiction of H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conon Doyle (especially The Lost World). Fawcett’s memoirs, striking for their contrast of visionary dreams and earthy rankness, relate many strange adventure – including an encounter with a giant anaconda of the Amazon.

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Fawcett ran across the giant snake in 1907. He was drifting along the Rio Negro with his Indian crew, when he spotted the snake. Fawcett reported that a great triangular head appeared at the bow of the boat, and when he shot the creature in the spine the body of the snake thrashed the water all around the boat. With great difficulty Fawcett convinced his crew to approach closer to the bank where the great snake lay. The Indians feared that the injured reptile would attack the boat or that its mate, as often happened, would come to destroy the hunters.

Fawcett then stepped onto the shore and cautiously approached the snake. According to Fawcett, the snake measured 45 feet out of the water and 17 in it, for a total of 62 feet. (Thanks to pp for images.)

This is the giant snake photograph shown on Arthur C. Clarke’s documentary, Mysterious Universe. It allegedly was taken by Belgian helicopter pilot Remy Van Lierde during a patrol over a river in the Republic of Congo in 1959. The snake was estimated to 40-50 feet long, with a 3 feet wide head. It reportedly lifted itself 10 feet into the air towards the chopper. Van Lierde said it was a dark shade of brown and green with a white underbelly. (Thanks to lol, cw, and ba for photo assistance.)

Finally, from August 11, 2006, Seth Pickett (from left), Clayton Grahm and Joey Woodruff, three Hamilton County boaters, hold the 19-foot python they discovered on the banks of the White River near Strawtown, a community north of Noblesville, Indiana. — Tim Miller / Indianapolis Star (Credit: Chad Arment)