The heaviest snake
A big female can weigh more than 100 kilograms, and be as thick as a person's waist.
Amazon river
Green anaconda
Eunectes murinus
A huge, thick, olive-green snake with black blotches, which spends most of its life in water.
- Size
- Up to 6m or more: the heaviest snake
- Look for it
- All year round
- Where
- Swamps and slow rivers of tropical South America
Glides after you through the water. Move your pointer and see.
When to look
Anaconda
Good to know
Six things about the anaconda
Eyes on top
Its eyes and nostrils are on top of its head, so it can lie hidden with almost all of it under water.
A squeezer
It has no venom. It wraps its coils round its prey and squeezes.
A meal that lasts
After a large meal, an anaconda may not need to eat again for months.
Live young
The female gives birth to twenty or more live babies, each already more than half a metre long.
Females are far bigger
Females are much longer and heavier than males, by more than in almost any other land animal.
The real thing
Photos of the anaconda
Photos are from Wikimedia Commons, used under the free licences shown. They have been resized, and cropped where they appear in link previews.
How to spot one
Look in the dry season, when anacondas lie in shrinking pools and on sunny banks. The Llanos of Venezuela and Colombia are the best place.
How to help
Anacondas are killed out of fear. They do an important job, and very rarely trouble people. Wetland protection is what they need.
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