Get all your news in one place.
100’s of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
World
Benjamin Lynch

Chilling tale of woman found eaten whole by mega-python cut open by shocked villagers

A woman was devoured whole by a snake in a terrifying deathly tale from Indonesia.

Mum-of-two Wa Tiba, 54, was discovered inside a seven-metre-long python in the country in 2018.

The strange event was noted for being out of the ordinary, shocking locals and worrying people there could be more to come.

Wa Tiba went missing while checking her vegetable garden, after which her sandals and machete were found.

Reports say a snake with a bloated belly was then seen around 50 metres away.

Tiba is said to have left her house at night with a torch because she wanted to stop wild boars from raiding her patch, but the village is in a rocky area with caves and cliffs said to be swarming with snakes.

She was found whole and still in her clothes.

A mum in Indonesia died in a snake-infested region (ViralPress)

Police chief Agung Ramos said: “People took the snake into the village and started splitting the snake.

“The suspicions were true and there was a body intact inside the snake. Unfortunately the victim was lifeless.”

Locals hunted down the snake and cut it open to find Wa Tiba inside, swallowed head-first and with her feet close to the snake's mouth.

The mum-of-two had gone to check on her vegetable patch (ViralPress)

Eyewitness in Southeast Sulawesi, Ayu Kartika said at the time: “Everyone was crying, everybody was shocked.

"The poor woman. This is like a horror movie. People are terrified.

“We are scared to go outside. We can only pray for safety.”

Pythons can reach up to 10 metres in length and tend to ambush their prey.

They wrap their powerful muscles around victims and literally squeeze the life out of them.

The prey usually has a cardiac arrest or suffocates.

Wa Tiba was found devoured whole (ViralPress)

The python's huge and stretchy jaws means they can devour large animals and will eat them whole.

This means humans have been known to fall victim to an opportunist snake.

Conservation and research officer for Wildlife Reserves Singapore Mary-Ruth Low told the BBC : "Once they reach a certain size it's almost like they don't bother with rats anymore because the calories are not worth it.

"In essence, they can go as large as their prey goes."

Pythons can eat humans thanks to their ability to open their jaws wide (ViralPress)

Low also said the barrier to snakes eating humans is the shoulder blades because they are "not collapsible".

The case of Wa Tiba is not the first recorded case of a python attacking and eating a human.

In 2002, a 10-year-old was swallowed by a rock python in South Africa.

Anthropologist Thomas Headland spent much of his life among the Agta people in the Philippines and said a quarter of the tribesmen had been attacked by a python, but most had managed to fend them off with machetes.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100’s of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.