Could it be real?

[JayGoliath]

This pic has been floating around the region for sometimes..and lately i've encountered a 20ft King Cobra...elusively.

 

[davidf99]

It's a great picture.

Wikipedia has references indicating that king cobras grow up to 18.5' in length. Without knowing more about the tree, it's hard to tell the scale in the photo.

The photo is too blurry, at least on my computer, to tell what kind of snake it is. I've seen reticulated pythons (in captivity) whose bodies would look like this in a blurred photo, and they can grow up to 32 feet long.

You say "floating around the region." What region is it?

 

[JayGoliath]

David,

It was believed to be taken in Johor, one of the state in Malaysia.

 

[davidf99]

David,

It was believed to be taken in Johor, one of the state in Malaysia.

Johor is mentioned in a Wikipedia article on reticulated pythons:

"On September 4, 1995, Ee Heng Chuan, a 29-year-old rubber tapper from the southern Malaysian state of Johor, was killed by a large reticulated python. The victim had apparently been caught unaware and was squeezed to death. The snake had coiled around the lifeless body with the victim's head gripped in its jaws when it was stumbled upon by the victim's brother. The python, measuring 23 ft (7.0 m) long and weighing more than 300 lb, was killed soon after by the arriving police, who required four shots to bring it down. [Murphy JC, Henderson RW. 1997. Tales of Giant Snakes: A Historical Natural History of Anacondas and Pythons. Krieger Pub. Co. 221 pp. ISBN 0894649957]"

The same article describeds the geographic range of this snake as:

"Southeast Asia from the Nicobar Islands, Bangladesh, Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia and Singapore, east through Indonesia and the Indo-Australian Archipelago (Sumatra, the Mentawai Islands, the Natuna Islands, Borneo, Sulawesi, Java, Lombok, Sumbawa, Sumba, Flores, Timor, Maluku, Tanimbar Islands) and the Philippines (Basilan, Bohol, Cebu, Leyte, Luzon, Mindanao, Mindoro, Negros, Palawan, Panay, Polillo, Samar, Tawi-Tawi)."

As for appearance, "they are relatively slim for their length and are certainly not the most heavily built."

It could also be a king cobra. Geographic range: "Bangladesh, Myanmar, Cambodia, China, India, Andaman Islands, Indonesia, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, west Malaysia, Philippines"

The king cobra is an interesting snake in many ways. For example, most snakes hiss when threatened; the king cobra growls! It kills and eats other cobras. Not exactly cannibalism, since the king cobra is a separate subspecies, not a true cobra.

Neither the head nor the skin markings show up very well in the photo, which makes it hard to tell whether this is a king cobra or reticulated python (or something else). The RP, though slim for a python, far outweighs a king cobra. Like 200-300 lbs versus 20-25 lbs.

 

[Gorog]

What a beautiful snake! Unfortunately, David, while I applaud your enthusiasm and thirst for knowledge, Wikipedia is not the best resource, just so you know, there is a reason schools ban it, because it is able to be edited by anyone with or without the proper resources, unless you are going to double check the resource page at the bottom of Wikipedia EVERY time, it is sometimes better not to use it. I'm not saying you nor Wikipedia are wrong ALL THE TIME, Wikipedia is probably clean of falsities MOST of the time, I'm saying that sometimes, spammers and foolish men and women, even children, can spoil educations with their antics via Wikipedia. As for snakes, I read my fair share of books about them, saw my share of movies, and I know the reticulated python and the anaconda are up there in size, on par with that picture, and the record breakers were probably even bigger. Even more unfortunately, I do not have the technology to enhance this picture digitally and ascertain exactly what those horizontally running, ever-so-faintly-there stripes are, so I won't say for certain, but it could be the king cobra's (vestigial?) 'cobra hood'. It looks like a reticulated python to me, and its characteristic body shape is there, the teardrop shaped cross-section. I feel fairly certain (sort of, I'm DEFINITELY just an urban junior biologist, not the real deal) that I can tell the difference by sight between king cobra body types and python body types, this is, to me, the clincher that this is not a king cobra, besides the fact that cobra's body markings are spaced out rather moreso than the denser markings in the picture. But, again, don't quote me on this, it's my free-time-educated-opinion, and not to be trusted more than a verifiable, testable, proveable scientific theory performed countless times by countless scientists for authenticity and thoroughness. But, yeah, I don't THINK it is a king cobra. I almost wish it was, but that would be unduly terrifying too, having a giant snake on the loose that can constrict AND envenomate its prey with lethal levels of its specific agent of aggressive action. Okay, I hope I was of some small help, and I hope that I was right, too, it would give me some much needed self confidence in my scientific observations. Peace, everyone.
David

 

[Gatogordo]

I've eaten King Cobra, stir fried and in a curry both, tasted pretty good but it was a bit overcooked. The ones I've been around were darker colored than that snake.

 

[JayGoliath]

Apparently it's possible:

The man in the picture is Mr. Krishna Ghule handled a 'King Cobra '. He is Master in Snake Handling a King Cobra of Wt - 16 Kg, length - 12' - 3', Seized in Goa
http://www.flixya.com/photo/18334/Biggest-King-Cobra

What i've heard is that the healthy distance between a full grown one and a human is about 10 feet; The curled body acts like a spring to propel the body towards the poor victim.

 

[Issun]

thats a huge snake, Id stay away from the palms if I thought that there might be one of those in them

 

[mohd]

When I was young (i.e. end of 1950s and 1960s) my family used to kill large pythons which came to our chicken coop to eat chickens.
Our house was at the middle of coconut plantation field in a village in the state of Selangor.
And at that time there were still many woods and forests there.
Those pythons came nearly every rainy season around December and normally they came at night time.
The size of the pythons were ranging from ~ 10 feet to ~ 15 feet long and ~ 4" to ~ 5" thick.
Normally we beheaded the pythons using long parangs (i.e. parang lading) and that's the easiest way to kill them
Anyhow I didn't hear about large python in my village since 1970s.
Most of the woods and forests in Selangor was already developed into palm oil plantation fields.
Anyhow in other states such as Johore, Pahang and Kelantan large forests and jungles are still there.
I don't know .. maybe once a while those serpents might stray to nearby villages

mohd

 

[davidf99]

thats a huge snake, Id stay away from the palms if I thought that there might be one of those in them

Sometimes the smaller snakes are more dangerous. Like the krait in these chilling lines from Rudyard Kipling's tale, "Rikki-tikki-tavi":

"But just as Teddy was stooping, something flinched a little in the dust, and a tiny voice said: 'Be careful. I am death!'' It was Karait, the dusty brown snakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his bite is as dangerous as the cobra's. But he is so small that nobody thinks of him, and so he does the more harm to people."

 

[JayGoliath]

"But just as Teddy was stooping, something flinched a little in the dust, and a tiny voice said: 'Be careful. I am death!'' It was Karait, the dusty brown snakeling that lies for choice on the dusty earth; and his bite is as dangerous as the cobra's. But he is so small that nobody thinks of him, and so he does the more harm to people."

I think you meant this:

Oligodon octolineatus has got us all infected quietly.