This is the horrifying moment a missing woman was found eaten alive by a giant python after locals cut her out of the snake’s belly.
Mother-of-four Farida, 50, disappeared while she was walking through woodland to sell food at a local market near her home in the village of Kalempang, Indonesia, on June 6.
The python plunged its teeth into her leg as it coiled around her body and suffocated her before swallowing her head first.
Farida’s husband Noni, 55, became worried she had not returned home by nighttime and alerted other locals who began searching.
They found a mammoth 20ft long python sprawled out in the undergrowth the next day, with a large bulge in its stomach. Its huge head can be seen a video from the scene, with its tongue flicking from its lips.
Suspecting the worst, the devastated husband and several villagers sliced through the thick skin with a machete.
Farida had been entombed inside the snake’s stomach covered in slime. She was removed and taken away for a religious burial in the Pitu Riawa district of Sidrap Regency, South Sulawesi province.
Noni said: ‘I am forever sorry that I let my wife go out alone. If I had been with her that day, the snake would not have dared to touch her.
‘I feel sorry for the suffering she went through. I am sorry for our family..’
Suardi Rosi, Head of the village of Kalempang where Farida and her family lived, said: ‘The victim’s husband looked for his wife in the nearby forest area because she had not been home for a day.
‘He found a snake with a large stomach. He immediately suspected that his wife had been eaten by the python.
Several other villages then helped him to catch the python. The body of his wife was found in the stomach of a snake. She was taken away to his house before being buried.
The reticulated python (Malayopython reticulatus) is the longest snake in the world, regularly reaching over 6.25 metres in length.
It is the longest of the 39 species in the family Pythonidae.
The longest reticulated python ever recorded was found in 1912 and measured in at a staggering 10 metres – that’s more than half the length of a bowling lane and makes this snake longer than a giraffe is tall.
Reticulated pythons live in southeast Asia and while they are typically found in rainforests, woodland and grasslands, their habitat preference seems to depend on their location.
In Myanmar, these non-venomous snakes have only been found in pristine forest, whereas in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysian Borneo they’ve also been recorded in sewers.
Reticulated pythons are known to climb trees by firmly wrapping their bodies around the trunks and using muscular upward force.
• Source: National History Museum