Snake devours large crocodile
This time, the legless reptile won.
If your mother told you to chew your food well, she clearly was no snake.
On Sunday, residents near Lake Moondarra in Queensland, Australia, gawked as a ten-foot snake, probably a python, won an epic battle against a crocodile, and then swallowed the carcass whole.
The fight lasted five hours, witnesses said.
"It was amazing," Tiffany Corlis told the BBC." The snake kept coiling around the crocodile, until it was no longer able to breathe.
"After the crocodile had died, the snake uncoiled itself, came around to the front, and started to eat the crocodile, face-first," Corlis said.
It only took 15 minutes for the snake to fully engulf the crocodile, Corlis said.
After photos taken by her and a Martin Mullen were turned into videos, the wild battle turned into a top trending topic on the Web. Together, two videos have racked up more than two-thirds of a million in about one day.
It's hardly the first time, though, that images of such a wild battle have been captured.
A 2009 "Python eats alligator" video, which shows all the action, has gotten more than 40 million views on YouTube.
Another, "Python vs. alligator," from the same year, has gotten even more views, despite ending in a standoff.
The croc won -- "destroys big python" -- in a 2010 video.
Last August, a helicopter pilot photographed a python that seemed to have burst open after devouring a Florida gator.
Maybe the alligator only passed out, woke up and started clawing, or maybe the python simply bit off more than it could ... digest.
Contact staff writer Peter Mucha at 215-854-4342 or pmucha@phillynews.com.