Green anacondas are the heavyweights of the snake world.
Their size has been exaggerated in the past, however. Green anacondas are the heaviest snakes in the world. The heaviest anaconda ever recorded was 227 kilograms. This massive snake was 8.43 metres long, with a girth of 1.11 metres.
While the reticulated python is longer, it’s also slender. Anacondas are bulky. It’s estimated that a 5.2-metre-long anaconda would weigh about the same as a 7.3-metre-long reticulated python.
Anacondas spend most of their time in water, and have eyes and nostrils on the top of their head © Daniel10ortegaven via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Green anacondas are non-venomous, solitary and found in South America and Trinidad. They spend most of their time in water, usually in swamps, marshes, slow streams and rivers. Because of this, the nostrils and eyes have evolved to be on top of the head, rather than to the sides, so that the snake can breathe and see prey and predators above water while its large body is kept submerged.
These snakes have a varied diet, from turtles and fish to peccaries, deer, capybaras (the world’s largest rodent), and even jaguars on rare occasions. Anacondas belong to the boa family and use their long, muscular bodies to constrict their prey.
A large anaconda is lifted out of a case on arrival at the New York Zoological Park (now the Bronx Zoo) in 1912 .
Although ‘anaconda’ is often used to refer to green anacondas, there are actually three other species that are all marginally smaller: the Bolivian anaconda (Eunectes beniensis), dark-spotted anaconda (Eunectes deschauenseei) and the yellow anaconda (Eunectes notaeus). They are all found in South America.
