Snuggling with anacondas

Aug. 18, 2006 | Jesus Rivas loves the green anaconda. The object of his affection is the biggest snake on earth, which regularly dines on 7-foot caimans (Spanish alligators). Rivas loves them so much that he walks barefoot through the swamps of Venezuela, his native country, until his toes touch one of the serpents lounging in the mud, at which point he wrestles them into submission. Perhaps for obvious reasons, field studies of the anaconda were virtually nonexistent before Rivas began pursuing his herpetological passion in the late '80s. Since then, he has captured more than 900 anacondas in the wild and carefully studied their life cycle -- including the previously undocumented "breeding aggregations," the balls of small male snakes that struggle to impregnate a giant female. Rivas has made several TV documentaries about his charismatic study animal, including "The Land of the Anacondas" with National Geographic. He's now an assistant professor at Somerset Community College in Kentucky.

Salon spoke to Rivas by phone about how it feels to snuggle with an anaconda, what to do when a large female tries to wrap you in an "evil loop," and the challenges of actually taking snakes on a plane.

What does it feel like to be close to anacondas. Are they cuddly?

They're not cuddly. [Laughs.] But they're not slimy, either. They're very muscular. When you grab them, you feel you're grabbing something hugely muscular underneath. The skin is smooth. It's nice to the touch. When you squeeze it, you know you're touching an extremely strong animal. You feel the layers of muscle under your hand. She normally grabs you back and holds you around your arm or leg. When I catch them in the wild they are upset, of course, and we have to wrestle.

You have to wrestle?

Yes, she grabs at you and you wrestle her back -- normally with several people. After about 15 minutes, I will be panting and tired, but the snake will be just as tired because her metabolism is slower and she doesn't recover as quickly. So after 15 minutes of struggle, the snake will just give up.

So is the snake trying to wrap herself around you and squish you in the "evil loop" the anaconda is famous for?

[Laughs.] I don't let her do that, but that's what she tries to do. It's about knowing how the animal is going to turn to avoid being caught by the loop.

You mean you've never been strangled or bitten?

Normally I'm the one going after the snake. If the snake came after me, it would be a different story. Normally when they attack prey, they grab with the mouth and then wrap it in a loop. The really dangerous, powerful thing about the anaconda isn't the bite but the squeeze. I have been bitten a few times, but they don't bite to hurt. They bite to hold.

How do you find these large snakes in the swamps of Venezuela?

I know the kind of places where they live -- usually in shallow waters with a lot of vegetation. I go shuffling through the water, feeling with my feet for them and poking with poles in the mud. Normally I find them by stepping on them.

You're kidding. You step on it and then you reach into the water to grab it?

Yes, that's when the fun begins. You know, when you step on something it could be anything. Could be a turtle, in which case there's nothing to do -- you're going to feel the shell. You feel something hard, but you need to reach with your hand to really define what it is. Sometimes you can reach and feel something hard but scaly, in which case it could be a caiman, which is a smaller cousin of the alligator. When I say smaller, it's 7 to 20 feet and with a very big mouth.

Next page: "Have you actually traveled with snakes on a plane?"