Recently Lindsay wrote about this photograph of a supposed giant anaconda from Brazil. Both Richard and I had seen the picture before but never in this quality or with the writing on it. However, as Richard writes: 'It's a green anaconda; you can tell from the belly markings. It does look very big but there is nothing to tell you how far away from the camera it is.'
Sunday, February 21, 2010
'GIANT' ANACONDA PICTURE
Recently Lindsay wrote about this photograph of a supposed giant anaconda from Brazil. Both Richard and I had seen the picture before but never in this quality or with the writing on it. However, as Richard writes: 'It's a green anaconda; you can tell from the belly markings. It does look very big but there is nothing to tell you how far away from the camera it is.'
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3 comments:
Many thanks to Lindsay for getting such a clear copy of this photo.
All other versions of this photo make it seem that it is a very large snake very far out in the water. This version does not give that impression, this time the appearance of the surface of the water makes it seem much closer to the camera and not nearly so large by the scale.
This is one of two pictures mentioned (and sketched, but not reproduced directly) by Tim Dinsdale in his The Leviathans (1966). The other, which is even less useful from the point of view of scale, can be seen as a sketch in a brief post I wrote on the subject here:
http://blogs.forteana.org/node/62
The original of this photo also turned up recently on the web.
The proportions stated on the photo look a bit odd. A 35m length with a 0.75m diameter gives it a thickness/length about 2%; a 25 ft specimen with those proportions would be only 6 inches across. And the 4 tonne weight seems very low: at a very rough guess a snake of those proportions would be nearer 10 tonnes. If it had the same proportions as a normal green anaconda it would be more like 25-30. Still, a photo which is designed to be sold as a tourist souvenir probably should not be taken as peer-reviewed science!
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