Snuggling with anacondas

Why don't you wear boots?

The boots really slow me down and I get stuck in the mud. Plus I have less capacity for feeling. You see, nothing will stop the jaws of a caiman. They will go right through the boot anyway. Even more dangerous is the freshwater sting ray. Its sting is reported to be the most painful thing in the world. But it would go right through the boot, too.

But being barefoot I can feel thoroughly and detect what it might be and pull out my foot sooner, which is better than putting on a clumsy boot and eventually getting hurt.

Also, I stopped wearing boots because of fungus. I developed a nasty fungal infection all the way up my ankles. It was horrendous. Without boots, my feet would dry more quickly and the fungus went away.

Can a mature anaconda actually eat a caiman?

Absolutely, yes. I have photos of that.

Could a mature anaconda eat somebody the size of Samuel Jackson?

How big is he?

He's a big man. I'm guessing he's over 6 feet tall.

How many pounds?

I'm not sure, but let's say 200.

Absolutely. Snakes are known to eat things that size or even bigger. There are records of snakes eating prey that weigh 160 percent of their body weight. So a 200-pound anaconda could eat something that weighs 300 pounds -- no problem.

So I've read that anacondas can get as big as 32 feet and weight 1,200 pounds.

That's been reported, but the biggest one I've ever captured was 18 feet and about 220 pounds. I've noticed something I call the coefficient of amazement -- the more amazement, the bigger the snake! Where I work in the Venezuelan Llanos there's a long dry season. It could be that anacondas live longer in the Amazon, where it's wetter, and therefore get bigger. But I don't believe anything that I haven't measured myself.

You travel the world studying anacondas. Have you ever traveled with snakes on a plane?

You know, I always try to avoid traveling with animals. But once I was doing a study in husbandry to see how well anacondas would do in captivity. The problem is, it's hard to get babies in the wild because they have a very low survival rate. I had caught a few but there was a zoo in Barquisimeto, a small city west of Caracas, which had a big female who had given birth to a lot of babies -- 29 baby anacondas. It was perfect. They agreed to give me the babies for my research, so I flew from Caracas to go pick them up. After spending a day there, I went to the airport with the babies in a pillowcase to take them back home.

A pillowcase?

The best cage, as any snake biologist knows, is a pillow case -- there's nothing else. If you're a snake biologist, you won't find any better device or cage.

You had 29 anacondas in a pillowcase?

Next page: He told me, "You can't travel with snakes on a plane, man!"