Anaconda

“ Those born dead in London offered no exception, therefore, to the rule, but were rather to be regarded as one of those cases in which the mother, under circumstances unpropitious [457] for the production of her progeny, retards the deposition of her eggs or her young.
Let us picture to ourselves the condition of this poor Anaconda. Just at the very time when instinct would have guided her to the spot most favourable for the coming brood, she is transferred from her native lagoons, and crowded into a dark close box just large enough to contain her. ”

“ So also, while some of the Boaidæ lay eggs, the anaconda is completely viviparous.
We would venture to urge upon those lovers of nature who dwell 'remote from towns' the value of careful observation and a noting down of what appears unusual, even of the habits of the much persecuted snake. ”

“ As the glutted anaconda, after swallowing a sheep alive, rests for a benign month or two underneath the tum-tum tree, thinking of home and mother, while the gross lump in his stomach gradually declines and lessens—so is the wox of the woman well and appropriately gowned, especially if that dress of hers has been successfully made over beyond all recognition. ”

“ Pinto slashed with all his might with his machete at the back of the great snake, but it was like attempting to cut through steel-studded leather. In spite of the attack, the coils of the great serpent moved toward the boy, who, without a sound, struggled to release his shoulder from the terrible grip of the curved teeth. The anaconda, the sucuruju of the natives, rarely ever attacks a man ”

“ Of American water snakes, the anaconda deserves special mention. Of it Seba says, ‘Ce serpent habite plus les eaux que les rochers;’ and in its having the nostrils situated on the top of the head, and in possessing some other features in common with the Homalopsidæ, we are justified in calling it a water serpent, notwithstanding it is a true constrictor. ‘Mother of waters,’ the aborigines of South America call it. It is the Boa aquatica of Neuwied, and Eunectes murinus of Wagler, the latter name being the one most frequently used by modern herpetologists. ”

“ Nonsense, Munday; there’s no such thing as a spirit of the waters. If there were, it would be of no use our trying to hide from it. What you’ve seen is an anaconda. I know these water-boas well enough,—have seen them scores of times among the islands at the mouth of the Amazon. I have no fear of them. Their bite is not poisonous, and, unless this is a very large one, there’s not much danger. ”

“ The country now rapidly grows wilder; tall forest replaces llanos or scattered growth, and the camps of rubber-collectors dot the river-banks. One afternoon, as we poled quietly along, we came upon a huge anaconda coiled up on a sand-bank; all about were iguanas three or four feet long, digging nesting burrows in the loose sand. The snake had just caught one of the big lizards and was crushing it into a limp mass, but the others paid not the slightest attention to the tragedy which was being enacted in their midst, and ran about or worked but a few feet away. ”

“ We were camped close beside a great creek which reached the affluent of the Amazon, and along these creeks, as along the river proper, were gigantic serpents. The anaconda is as much at home on land as in water. Those big constrictors of the southern part of this great hemisphere are dreadful. They prey upon the deer and upon a thousand other things. They are a terror everywhere, and, though we did not know it at the time, there was concealed in that tree beneath which poor Alan was lying, a very healthy specimen of this powerful reptile. ”

“ There are two distinct species, namely: the boa-constrictor, or land-snake; and the anaconda, which spends the greater part of its life in and near water. This latter attains the greater length. A fully grown boa-constrictor does not exceed twelve feet in length; ten or eleven feet is the usual size attained. There is a great difference in the tempers of the two species. A boa soon becomes very tame, and in many places the natives keep them running at large in the huts to catch rats. The anaconda is of a restless disposition and easily irritated. ”

“ Soon the vine grows until its proportions resemble those of a huge serpent, and it has reached the topmost branches and mingled its own foliage and flowers with those of its trellis. [327] The standard tree is from that moment doomed, and wastes away in the murderous grasp of the vegetable anaconda. The matapalo may fall in the ruin of its decaying foster-parent, but not infrequently it has prepared for the emergency by sending out many a guy and splitting the main stem into numerous buttresses, so that it can stand alone—a very remarkable tree, and one often used as a boundary-mark. ”

“ The tightening of the prehensile coil of the anaconda’s tail on 61the limb of its attachment, and upward retractile corrugations of his body with corresponding attenuation, disclosed the difficulty he encountered from the elasticity of his leverage, which prevented the concentration of muscular strength necessary for the strangulation of his victim. To the elasticity of the limb the alligator owed his prolonged existence and chance of advantageous retrieval. ”

“ Any conscientious man would, taking their size and voracity into consideration.
Next to the great sea-serpent, the largest and most powerful constricting snake that we know of is the anaconda of South America, which grows to at least thirty feet long, and is said by the Spaniards to be capable of overpowering and eating a bull. ”

“ I plucked the little down-like feathers from one of my blow-pipe darts. And these, at intervals of a few yards, I dropped upon the surface of the water, all around the bank of the pool, until I found the stream itself, flowing through a dense clump of thickets.
Through this I broke my way, and as I did so, I remembered the anaconda, and was filled with my old fear of snakes. It was plain already that my surmise had been wrong. The brook did not flow underground, but, for about a hundred yards or so, through a dark and narrow tunnel, formed of low-growing creepers. ”

“ All snakes, and especially the Anaconda, are good swimmers. The anaconda however does not often attack the capybara while it is swimming. The little creature is more expert in the water than it is on land, and only it's aquatic equal could hope to seize it. ”

“ The anaconda, they informed the children, was so big that it could crush a house; the buffaloes of America were domestic and harmless. “This,” said the editor, “is the way they are teaching the young idea how to shoot, but we should call it bad shooting!” Miss Beecher had no domestic buffaloes and no house-crushing anacondas in her book, and it seems to have been clear enough of inanities to displace that of Malte Brun in the city’s list of school books in 1834. ”

“ The serpent on being measured with Frank's pocket rule proved to be a trifle over twenty feet long and of great girth.
"It's an anaconda," said Ben, "there are lots of 'em up along the Amazon and they are as deadly a snake as there is. I've heard tell they can crush a horse in their folds."
"I hope there are no more of them on the island," exclaimed Billy.
"We shall have to be careful," rejoined Ben, "there may be other dangerous creatures here, too. This island, as I should judge, must be all of six miles around and there's room for a lot of ugly critters in that space." ”

“ Although mammals and crocodiles are occasionally eaten by this snake, it prefers birds, these being constricted and eaten under water. Only a single instance of an anaconda having attacked a man is on record. Although it grows to a length of over thirty feet, it is sexually mature when about half that length.
Various very slender and agile species, the tree boas, belong to the tropical American forests, one of which is called the "rainbow" boa because of its marvelous iridescence in the sunlight. ”

“ One still more remarkable characteristic of the anaconda is that, like the sea-snakes (Hydrophidæ) , but unlike the python, it produces its young alive. We have long been accustomed to think that only vipers produce live young—and hence their name—and that all the non-venomous snakes lay eggs. But snakes, so far as those in captivity are concerned, are continually doing what is not expected of them. Zoological Gardens afford valuable opportunities to students for acquiring knowledge of the form, size, habits, &c. ”

“ The bravest man might well have been excused for not facing the hideous monster unarmed. The first impulse of everyone was to spring to the afterpart of our craft, as far as possible from its huge fangs. Our cries, and the row of bristling lances presented to the anaconda, made it hesitate to spring on us. Indeed, it had not as yet, I suspect, got firm hold of the log with its tail, which would have enabled it to do so. While the rest of us were presenting our lances, Maco seized a bow and sent an arrow directly down the creature’s throat! ”

“ It does not seem in itself impossible that a snake of even thirty, or thirty-five, feet in length should be able to destroy a bull; but there is one thing which inclines me to doubt the anaconda’s doing so, as well as its growing to such a size as the Spaniards reported. Before South America was colonised by the Spaniards there were no cattle in the country, so we must assume that this great snake was not larger or stronger than would be necessary to allow it to overcome the largest wild animals with which it came in contact. ”

“ Anacon ́da, the popular name of two of the largest species of the serpent tribe, viz. a Ceylonese species of the genus Python (P. tigris) , said to have been met with 33 feet long; and Eunectes murīnus, a native of tropical America, allied to the boa-constrictor, and the largest of the serpent tribe, attaining the length of 40 feet. They frequent swamps and rivers, are without poison fangs, and kill their victims by constriction.
Anaconda, a town of the United States, Montana, with the largest copper-smelting works in the world. Pop. ”

“ What is real and true is of itself sufficiently surprising. It is true that in the South American rivers there are anacondas, or “water-boas,” as they are sometimes called, over thirty feet in length and of proportionate thickness; that these monstrous creatures can swallow such quadrupeds as capivains, deer, and even large-sized animals of the horse and cattle kind; that they are not venomous, but kill their prey by constriction,—that is, by coiling themselves around it, and crushing it by a strong muscular pressure ”

“ One day a small herd of capybaras were slowly moving along the water's edge feeding quietly when suddenly they were attacked by a snake. In Brazil is found the largest snake in the world – the Anaconda. ”

“ The serpents and insects are far more dreaded and annoying than the wild beasts. Many of the former are fearfully venomous. The boa occasionally finds a human being in the forest, sick or wounded, and unable to fly, and winds its huge coils round his body. The anaconda is equally dangerous to those sleeping near the river’s edge; while the cunning and savage alligator lies in wait for the unwary bather or drawer of water who ventures into the stream; and termites and ants devour the stores of the inhabitants, and, in certain localities, well-nigh sting them to madness. ”

“ When the parent is in health, the young are produced easily and rapidly. Vipera nasicornis deposited her forty-six children within about three hours. A Java snake (though not in our London Ophidarium) produced twenty-four young ones in twenty minutes. Anaconda, in April 1877, on the contrary, exhibited considerable protraction, extruding bad eggs at irregular intervals for many days. She will form the subject of the next chapter.
Incubation, or the hatching of eggs by the maternal warmth, seems not to have been suspected by ophiologists until a comparatively recent date ”

“ They will sometimes upset a whole canoe, or will lift a man out of his seat and drag him to the bottom.” This may or may not be an Indian exaggeration, but it is certainly a fact that the anaconda and his many brethren in the Paraguay make no trouble of carrying off a calf or small deer that has come down to drink.
“To-morrow we must kill something,” said another Indian as he unwrapped a slab of carne seca, or dried beef, from a strip of grass matting. ”

“ It may be suspected that the letter of "R. Edwin" was the foundation of all or most of the stories alluded to in these passages. Still we have the authority of Ray's friend that Anaconda, or rather Anacondaia, was at Leyden applied as a Ceylonese name to a specimen of this python. ”

“ The ticpolonga, a deadly snake, the terror of the natives, is often found in this garden. The largest snake in Ceylon is the boa or anaconda, which is often seen here measuring over twenty feet in length. It feeds mostly on small animals, and is very little feared either by the natives or Europeans. It is not an agreeable sight, nevertheless, as the reader may suppose, to see a large boa moving along the ground near one's person, and free to act its own pleasure. ”

“ If not of too large a size, several animals will often be swallowed in rapid succession, after which the gorged snake will allow its digestive organs several days, or even weeks, of repose. A large Anaconda in the Paris Jardin des Plantes fed only thirty-six times in the course of seven years. Digestion is usually rapid in the small snakes, defecation taking place twenty-four to forty-eight hours after the feeding; it 100 lasts much longer in the large Boas and Pythons. ”