Central African rock python
Python sebae
— Where the name comes from
Sebae recalls Albertus Seba, an Amsterdam apothecary who in the eighteenth century assembled one of the most extraordinary cabinets of natural curiosities in Europe and had its catalogue engraved in four volumes of plates. His collection was bought by Peter the Great, and many species described by Linnaeus exist for science only because they had passed through that shop.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Squamates
- Habitat
- Savannah, gallery forest, riverbanks, reedbeds
- Range
- Sub-Saharan Africa
- Size
- 300–450 cm, up to 600 cm; 40–65 kg
- Diet
- Small antelope, hyraxes, young crocodiles, birds, rodents
- Lifespan
- 20 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It is the largest snake in Africa.
- 02
It ambushes at waterholes, half-hidden in the mud.
- 03
The female guards her eggs for three months without eating.
— What sets it apart
In several West African cultures it is a sacred animal and killing it is taboo: at Ouidah in Benin there is a temple of pythons where dozens live free and are fed by the priests, and local people who find one in the house take it back there rather than kill it. In parallel the species is hunted on a large scale elsewhere for its skin and its meat: the same snake, a few hundred kilometres apart, is a deity and a handbag.
