| 1 | Reticulated python |
Maximum length: 6.95 metres (wild).
A resident of southeast Asia, including Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Vietnam, and extreme northeastern India. The reticulated python (Malayopython reticulatus) is not only extremely widespread, but officially recognised as the world’s longest snake.
This species can reach gargantuan lengths in remote jungles, with one extreme legend being a 10 metre monster shot dead in Celebes, northern Sulawesi in 1912. Supposedly, because this was near a mining camp, there were civil engineers on site to perform a scientific measurement.
This could be true or false, as no proof survives today (unless it’s stashed in someone’s attic). But what’s beyond doubt is that reticulated pythons regularly exceed 6 metres, with the longest official measurement in the wild being 6.95 metres in 1999, a snake from Borneo. This snake was so huge that it swallowed a small, 50 pound sunbear, and spent several weeks in a hollow log digesting.
Reticulated pythons regularly eat pigs, deer, dogs, and even small children. In the Philippines, the Agta tribe has been waging a tireless war on them for decades. In Thailand, they regularly drape themselves across entire roads and block people.
The longest ever snake in captivity (officially confirmed) was a reticulated python called Medusa, who lived in “The Edge of Hell Haunted House” in Kansas City. While being measured in 2011, she had to be held by 15 people, and the final result was 7.67 metres. Less officially, but maybe still truthfully, the captive “Samantha” measured 7.92m in 2002, while “Fluffy” measured 7.3m in 2010.
| 2 | African rock python |
Maximum length: at least 6 metres.
The central African rock python is the undisputed longest snake in Africa. Its average length is 3-3.5 metres, but above 4 metres is perfectly common, and unproven reports of 7 metre titans aren’t unusual. It tops this off with an exceptionally thick body, making for a maximum weight of 200 pounds.
There are stories of monster African rock pythons aplenty. In 1932, a 9.81m python was supposedly shot dead by Mrs Charles Beart, in the grounds of a school in Ivory Coast. Another Ivory coast python was reported at 7.3 metres – supposedly, the west African populations are the largest of all.
Their meals are enormous. In 2017, some hyena researchers came across a small boulder submerged in a swamp. Except that it wasn’t a boulder – it was an African rock python with a 150 pound hyena (fortunately not one of their research subjects) in its belly. This is believed to be the largest snake prey ever recorded. A story from 1958 has K..H. Kroft finding a 7 metre African rock python with a Nile crocodile in its stomach, measuring 1.5 metres.
African rock pythons are large enough to attack humans, such as one that seized a 13 year old boy in 1979. His friends fled and returned with a village elder 20 minutes later, who attacked the python with a pick axe, but suffered a dislocated arm when the giant serpent seized the pickaxe with its mouth.
The boy was dragged free, but was sadly already dead, with his head covered in saliva. The python was tracked for 0.5 miles to an overhanging rock formation where it lay coiled, and was dragged alive to the coroner’s office, who measured it at 4.5 metres.
| 3 | Green anacadona |
Maximum length: 5.21 metres (wild), 6.24m (captivity).
For many years, Bronx Zoo had a $50,000 dollar reward up for grabs, initiated by President Teddy Roosevelt, for information leading to a 30 feet+ (9.144 metres) anaconda. No-one ever succeeded, but for average length, the green anaconda of South America is the third largest snake on Earth.
A giant study was conducted by Dr. Jesús Antonio Rivas, an expert on the species. He analysed 1000 wild green anacondas in total, and found that the longest was 5.21 metres. Unconfirmed but credible reports of 5.6 and 6.27 metres have also circulated the rumour mill. The minimum adult length is 3.2 metres, and the average in the huge study above was 3.7 metres, enough to fill a moderately sized hallway.
It’s said that green anacondas reach their largest sizes in thickly forested riverside areas. Their diet includes such huge animals as spectacled caimans, red side-necked turtles, red-footed tortoise, deer and capybaras.
In 2018, the rumour mill exploded when a supposedly 50 foot anaconda was filmed swimming across a river in Brazil. The video went viral on facebook, but the video was clearly digitally altered: it had been stretched sideways from vertical mode to fill the entire screen, massively elongating the snake. The river was actually a flooded road, and the original unedited video was soon tracked down. Yet the real anaconda shown was still gigantic.
| 4 | King cobra |
Maximum length: 5.85 metres.
The undisputed length leader among venomous snakes. The king cobra really is the king in certain ways – extremely long, with an official wild maximum of 5.54 metres recorded in 1937.
This individual was captured in Negeri Sembilan state on the Malay Peninsula, and by 1939, it had reached 5.71 metres. The cobra lived a healthy life in London Zoo, until World War 2 broke out and the curators euthanised the snake over fears that German bombings could help it to escape and roam the streets.
The king cobra’s massive length allows it to jump 1 metre off the ground when striking, and almost as far when baring its fangs in its classic intimidation pose. The king cobra is ophiophagous – a snake that eats other snakes – and its huge length allows it to eat oriental ratsnakes, Indian cobras, and mangrove snakes. They even eat reticulated pythons, and a 2.79 metre python may be the species’ longest recorded meal. The cobra itself was 3.66 metres. One king cobra studied ate 13.7 metres of snakes from July to March – this cobra measured 4.34 metres.
A more thorough study analysed dozens of king cobras in Kerala state, southwest India, and found a male maximum of 3.75 metres, and a female maximum of 2.75 metres.
| 5 | Burmese python |
Maximum length: 579cm.
An invader of the Florida Everglades, and a native species to India and Myanmar (AKA Burma). The Burmese python is one of the hungriest, greediest-looking snakes around. It’s also long, with an average of 3.7 metres, and a thick body to match.
In captivity, the longest officially recognised Burmese python was “Baby”, who clocked in at 5.74 metres very shortly after her death at age 27. Captive snakes can be fed to their hearts’ content, but unusually, the wild records are slightly ahead with this species. They include 5.2 metres in April 2019, 5.72 metres in 2013, and 5.5 metres in December 2021.
Finally, in July 2023, Jake Walleri stumbled across a huge Burmese python by a road in Big Cypress National Preserve. After attempting to attack the humans cornering it, the invasive python was killed, and eventually measured at a colossal 5.79 metres. With such high numbers in the Florida everglades (although eradication efforts are underway), this is an easier giant snake for western scientists to measure than others.
Burmese pythons swallow pigs and deer in captivity, and attempt to eat alligators in the wild. One X-ray showed the brutal results of ingesting a 50cm young gator. It revealed how the python’s metabolism accelerated 40 fold, a flood of stomach acid and digestive enzymes was unleashed, and its heart and kidneys enlarged by 40% and 72% respectively.
There was also a viral photo from around 2005 showing a Burmese python that supposedly exploded after trying to eat a 6 foot gator – nobody has ever proven whether this is real (or fake).
| 6 | Scrub python |
Maximum length: 565.1cm.
Australia’s largest snake, once thought to be the same species as the amethystine python in New Guinea, but actually independent, and even larger. Scrub pythons reach a maximum confirmed length of 5.65 metres, a female caught in Palm Cove near Cairns in 2000. The largest male ever caught measured 5.33 metres, and was found in Kuranda in 2002.
Scrub pythons live in the forests of Australia’s far north, particularly Queensland. Their diet consists of mammals and birds, including small wallabies and kangaroos, spectacled flying foxes (a megabat), bush rats, and bandicoots. One of their largest officially confirmed meals was a 22 pound wallaby, devoured by a 4.4 metre scrub python.
Making matters worse, there’s a gorge in northern Australia called Tully River Gorge where huge amounts of scrub pythons congregate at once. The largest males will slither down in the dry season, to fight each other and lay claims of reproduction. The snakes in this gorge ranged from 1.3-3.76 metres, in a study from 2005.
With their gigantic size comes gigantic travel, as some were able to travel 1.3km in a single day. It’s a two sided coin: the largest males mated with females the most, but also had the most combat wounds on their bodies.
| 7 | Oenpelli’s python |
Maximum length: 5 metres.
The rarest of the giant snakes, and possibly Australia’s rarest python. The Oenpelli python is sometimes called “the ghost”, because there’s only 10,000, and they live exclusively in deep soil tunnels in Australia’s scorched northern regions. Gavin Bedford once spent 1100 hours searching for one with helicopter assistance, before he finally lucked out and saw one lying lazily on the baked Earth below (which was pretty anticlimatic).
The Oenpelli python is Australia’s second longest snake, regularly reaching over 4 metres. Rumour states that a 5 metre individual lurks in captivity somewhere. Their eggs are particularly gigantic, averaging at 6 by 11cm.
The difference to other huge snakes is that the Oenpelli python is very thin for its length. It’s a constrictor, but far less muscular and bulky, more like a hosepipe than a fallen log. The Oenpelli python is an influential character in Aboriginal folklore, possibly inspiring the ancient rainbow serpent myths.
Being so unstudied, there are few sightings of Oenpelli pythons eating massive prey. But their diet is believed to include possums, birds, rodents, and possibly small kangaroos and wallabies.
| 8 | Cuban boa |
Maximum length: 485.1cm.
Forget the boa constrictor – the Cuban boa easily outstrips it for sheer size. The early European colonisers of Caribbean islands were shocked at the size of the native boas. They wrote in their journals of snakes as thick as a man’s thigh, and measuring up to 9.12 metres.
More recently, in 1989, a 4.85 metre female was run over near Guantanamo Naval Base. Another colossal Cuban boa supposedly measured 6.65 metres, after which a whole goat tumbled out of its stomach.
Like Jamaica, Cuba only has one giant boa species, with the Cuban boa completely dominating. It’s believed that early colonisation by such a giant boa forced all the others to stay away.
Why so low on the list? 200 years ago, the Cuban boa would have been higher, but there’s strong evidence that they’ve shrunk in recent years. Similarly to the mamushi in Japan, the more human agriculture encroaches upon the Cuban boa’s habitat, the more the 5 metre versions disappear. These days, 3 metres is considered to be long. The reason is simply fearful farmers and villagers being more likely to club the huge ones to death, steadily wiping out the gigantic genes.
| 9 | Yellow anaconda |
Maximum length: 4.6 metres.
The green anaconda’s southerly cousin isn’t quite as long as the northern version, but for maximum size, it still outstrips approximately 3900 other snake species on the planet.
Yellow anacondas are indeed significantly yellower than the green anaconda, usually contrasting against black scales as well. As well by appearance, they’re completely separated by location. The green anaconda inhabits the Amazon rainforest, reaching as far north as Venezuela and Colombia, but the yellow anaconda inhabits the Paraguay river and its various tributaries. Consequently, this species is restricted to Paraguay, northern Argentina, and extreme southern Brazil, where it has no area of overlap with its green cousin.
Despite a small terrain, yellow anacondas are healthy in their populations, and likely number well into the millions. Almost all of these individuals measure over 1 metre, and the largest of all time was recorded at 4.6 metres.
Females are longer than males, but only males have spiky spurs lower down on their body. Yellow anacondas have a similar lifestyle to the green anaconda, prowling rivers and marshes, lunging at prey wandering past on the shores from shallow water.
| 10 | Black mamba |
Maximum length: 425cm.
The black mamba also fell victim to the viral craze phenomenon recently, when photos circulated facebook of a 6 metre monster mamba, which really turned out to be an Australian sculpture. Nevertheless, the black mamba is officially the second longest venomous snake in the world, and the longest in Africa.
Black mambas are thin like a twig, but average at 2 metres, and commonly reach 3 metres. This South African snake catcher reported that 4.1 metres was his longest sighting, over an experienced career.
The official record is 4.25 metres, possibly 4.4 metres, but African village elders will laugh at this and inform you of 6 metre monsters. The black mamba is feared for its aggression, and during its lighting fast strike, it can raise an entire third of its body off the ground, often up to 1.2 metres.
Black mambas are huge from the moment they’re born. Hatchlings measure 40-60cm, longer than an adult ringneck snake (found in Californian forests). They can blast through the 2 metre mark after just 1 year.
Because of their thin bodies, black mambas rarely attack huge prey. In one study, the average prey size was 1.9–7.8% of the black mamba’s body mass, but they’re still known to swallow mammals like rock hyraxes and dassies.
| 11 | Olive python |
Maximum length: at least 4 metres.
Australia’s third largest snake, residing in the far north, and no additional countries. The olive python regularly reaches 4 metres, and has the claim to fame of fitting a freshwater crocodile in its belly.
In Lake Moondara in northern Queensland, the two species were spotted in a terrible struggle in the shallow lakeside waters. The olive python barely seemed to fit around its prey, but the constriction eventually worked, after which the olive python dragged the crocodile to shore, swallowing it over the course of 15 minutes. The video was widely reported by the international media – everyone else vowed to move further away from Australia.
Despite their bulk, olive pythons are great swimmers. They also hunt rock wallabies, fruit bats, ducks and spinifex pigeons. In 2021, a man entered public toilets near Darwin and saw an olive python draped across an entire cubicle. He retreated and entered the adjacent cubicle. No luck – the snake was so long it was covering two.
The most horrific thing is that the olive python had an even longer ancestor. It belongs to the genus Liasis, and the extinct Liasis dubudingala was believed to measure 9 metres, based on vertebra unearthed in northeast Queensland. It was named the Bluff Down’s giant python.