Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/02/22/worlds-largest-sname.html
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At the same time?? That is a long snake!
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Why the hell would you go swimming that close to a monstrously huge anaconda!
A creature that kills by wrapping around its prey and crushing it to death!
That guy on the video and the cameraman! Underwater!
I will never understand this.
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It was ignoring them. Also, you can see where it’s starting to shed, so it’s more interested in the itch than something odd swimming nearby. Did not expect to see that choice of dive clothes though.
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Sure, there were probably a lot of reasons why they felt safe enough to do that.
And I’m sure Steve Erwin had a lot reasons to feel safe manhandling a manta ray on the surface of a boat.
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Oh hell no. Also, fuck that shit.
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But… more snek to luv!
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It probably just ate. I’m sure it’s fine.
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So what you’re saying is, it’s about to get a little bit bigger? 
Just think, if in 2024 you can still discover a new animal this big in the smallest countries in South America, maybe there really could be sauropods in the middle of the Congo.
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Holy Harryhausen.
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I have those goggles in pink.
That shed looks terrible. I’d say snekkie didn’t have access to sufficient water for hydration, but, well…
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If these snakes could somehow get on planes, they’d be unstoppable.
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Except that Steve Irwin was not manhandling a Manta Ray on a boat when he died. For a start, Manta Rays, while huge and impressive, do not have stingers. Irwin was filming near a sting ray in shallow water and was hugely unlucky when it struck him in the heart.
I’m not saying Irwin didn’t often take risks as part of his TV style but he was an important conservationist and educator and not a reckless idiot.
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Yeah, I was also very impressed with Steve Irwin when he was holding his own infant son in one hand while hand feeding raw meat to an unrestrained 13 foot crocodile. Very smart move. No way it could have gone wrong.
My point: I consider grandstanding for video to be worthless. Sure, they probably know a lot about animals and they were probably right that the odds were on their side. And also, it doesn’t seem to me that the reward is worth the risk of getting a bad roll.
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That wasn’t great, I agree. I’m sure there’s all sorts of camera angle and knowing the animals stuff that made it actually low risk, but I agree there’s a real danger in making it look like a generally safe way to behave around animals.
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I’m definitely a terrible researcher.
The largest snake I managed find on the Amazon is a paltry 110".
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Distracted as I am, I’d never attempted such a stunt.
“oops, wrong hand”
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They haven’t really “discovered a new species”- they’ve split an existing species into two:
Our data show that two distinct lineages within the former E. murinus form well-supported deep clades, allowing the separation of two species based on their genetic divergence […]
So it was already known that there were green anacondas in the region, it just wasn’t known that they were genetically distinct from the green anacondas further south.
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