Giant Anacondas
Nearly everyone is familiar with the anaconda of the Amazon Basin, but how large can an anaconda be? Considerably larger than the scientifically accepted length, according to the Indians of the jungle. They tell stories of a creature called sucuriju gigante, reputed to be an anaconda of aquatic habits and immense size.
In 1907, Major Percy Fawcett, noted explorer of the Amazon, recounted not once, but twice encounters with the Sucuriju. The snake's first mention in Fawcett's memoirs has been recorded thusly: "The manager at Yorongas told me he had killed an anaconda fifty-eight feet long in the Lower Amazon." Although Fawcett confessed that initially he thought this an exaggeration, he placed stock in its validity after an encounter of his own.
We were drifting along in the sluggish current not far below the confluence of the Rio Negro when ... there appeared a triangular head and several feet of undulating body. It was a giant anaconda. I sprang for my rifle ... and hardly waiting to aim smashed a .44 soft-nosed bullet into its spine ... As far as it was possible to measure, a length of forty-five feet lay out of the water, and seventeen feet in it, making a total length of sixty-two feet ... A penetrating foetid odour emanated from the snake, probably its breath, which is believed to have a stupefying effect ... The Brazilian Boundary Commission told me of one killed in the Rio Paraguay exceeding eighty feet in length!
The scientifically accepted maximum length for an anaconda is disputed. While many conservative scientists cite the maximum length as somewhere around twenty feet, Bernard Heuvelmans, in his thorough treatment of the Sucuriju Gigante, cites a skin kept at the Butantan Institute in Brazil to suggest a greater length. The skin in question is about thirty feet in length. Heuvelmans believes that, therefore, the anaconda probably reaches at least twenty-four feet in length. A similar size is cited by American herpetologists Charles H. Curran and Carl Kauffeld.
None of these lengths, though, are anywhere near the incredible length cited by Fawcett. However, his account is not the first - nor the last - to suggest an anaconda of incredible size.
As far back as 1846, George Gardner recounted in Travels in the Interior of Brazil how anacondas, or "boas" as he called them, were numerous in Brazil. He relates how he saw a dead Sucuriju on the lands of a Senhor Lagoeira. The snake was about thirty-three feet long. Although larger than the commonly-accepted anaconda length, Gardner's snake is hardly a monster when compared with Fawcett's sighting.
Father Victor Heinz encountered a monster snake near the town of Obidos, on the shores of the Amazon, on May 22, 1922. This serpent appeared to Heinz to be nearly eighty feet in length. A giant anaconda was also killed at the Lago Grande de Salea near Obidos, but we have no record of its size.
Father Heinz had a second encounter in 1929. This sighting took place at the mouth of the Rio Piaba, near Alemquer. Father heinz said that two large bluish lights appeared near the surface of the water. He at first mistook them for lights from a steamer, but was later told that a Sucuriju lived in the area.
By 1930, he had become enthralled by the giant snakes. He collected the account of trader Reymondo Zima. On July 6 of that year, Zima encountered a glowing-eyed serpent in the Rio Jamunda, opposite the town of Faro.
On September 27 of the same year, Joao Penha had also seen a giant anaconda, this one on the Rio Iguarape. This snake, too, had luminous eyes. It was immensely strong (it pushed a wall of submerged debris some nine hundred feet), but Penha does not provide a size estimate.
Another account he collected was that of Paul Tarvalho, from 1948. Near the same place where Zima had his encounter, Tarvalho saw a snake emerge from the water. The reptile, he said, was about one hundred and fifty feet long. However, Tarvalho saw the serpent at a distance of almost nine hundred feet, so his estimate of its length is probably inaccurate.
In 1923, F.W. Up de Graff reported that an anaconda was seen lying in the water underneath his canoe. He estimated that it measured fifty feet in length, "and probably nearer sixty". Nine years earlier, Algot Lange claimed to have shot and killed an anaconda of similar length; its skin was sent to New York.
In 1933, the Brazil-Colombia Boundary Commission claimed that an anaconda some ninety feet long was killed on the banks of the Rio Negro. A photograph was also supplied.
Another photograph surfaced in 1948. An anaconda about one hundred feet long, was killed in Fort Tabatinga, on the Rio Oiapoc. The photograph, however, makes it difficult to determine if the snake was actually of the length cited.
Painter Serge Bonacase told Heuvelmans of an encounter with a Sucuriju that he had in 1947. Almost twenty other men were with Bonacase at the time of this encounter. Bonacase's sighting took place in the swampy area between the Rio Manso and the Rio Cristalino.
The guide pointed out an anaconda asleep on a rise in the ground and half hidden among the grass. We approached to within 20m and fired our rifles at it several times ... Only then did we realise how enormous it was.
Using a piece of string about three feet in length, Bonacase's party estimated the snake's length at about seventy feet. Heuvelmans feels that the animal was, at the very least, about sixty-five feet in length.
While investigating the holadeira in June, 1995, Jeremy Wade recorded the tale of Dorgival Sabino, who encountered a giant anaconda in the Rio Negro near the city of Manaus. The snake was about sixty-five feet long, which seems to be the average length of a Sucuriju. His report is unusual, though, in that he says the snake had either horns or extremely long teeth.
Wade also collected a similar report from Amarilho Vincente de Oliveira. One evening around 1977, he encountered a horned sucuriju on the Rio Purus. "Its head had horns like the roots of a tree," de Oliveira said, "and we could see these greenish eyes as well".
The next year, when Wade returned to the Amazon, he decided to look into the reports further. He travelled to one of the sighting areas; although he does not specify which, I believe it may be the area along the Rio Purus where de Oliveira had his sighting. He found that two brothers fishing in the river had seen a giant anaconda stick its head about twenty inches out of the water.
Soon after, one of the brothers found a skull and ribs of an anaconda. His measurements led Wade to estimate that the snake was, in life, at least thirty feet long. Another man in the same area told of seeing an anaconda's rib some 3 feet long. This is probably apocryphal, since in life the snake would have approached one hundred and fifty feet long.
More recent reports of the anaconda were made in 1995 by botanist Grace Rebelo dos Santos. In June of that year, she saw two bluish lights nearly a foot apart. This came shortly after a net became caught on something heavy. She cautiously suggested that this might be a sucuriju. On December 23, she encountered what might have been a second giant anaconda. She saw a "waterspout" about ten inches tall, and a long, dark shape was seen underneath it.
HEUVELMANS, Bernard
1995 On
the Track of Unknown Animals (reprint). London: Kegan Paul.
WADE, Jeremy
1997
Snakes Alive! Fortean Times 97 (May).