Romanian explorer registers largest female python ever found in Guiness World Records

A Romanian explorer and photographer, Radu Frențiu, found the longest wild snake in the world on an island in the Indonesian archipelago. The female python, measuring 7.22 meters, was registered in the Guinness World Records.

"If placed across a standard FIFA goal, this prodigious python would occupy essentially the entire width from post to post. Alternatively, it is around the length of six-and-a-half shopping carts/trolleys in a row," reads the official press release.

None of the python family are venomous, but they can kill by coiling around their victims and asphyxiating them. As a result, when reticulated pythons do come into the vicinity of an inhabited area, they tend to be exterminated immediately, and more generally they are also hunted as a source of bushmeat.

Radu Frențiu said he did not fear the 97 kg reptile, named “Ibu Baron” (“The Baroness”), and that he had the help of locals and zoologists.

“I have a whole team of wonderful local people who help me and whom I can always rely on. Success is never the achievement of one person alone. If you hear someone boasting on their own, that will never be the case. It is always the merit of a team, and I want to thank most of all my Indonesian friends,” said Frențiu, who has been living in Indonesia for almost 20 years, cited by Digi24.

The Romanian also spoke of his passion for photography and travel. He had heard from a friend about the rescue of a giant python.

“I made sure, first of all, that the animal was saved. It is an exceptional animal. I did not expect it to be of such a size,” Frențiu said.

The snake would have been much longer if killed, as it usually happens, but the team that found it preferred to keep the animal alive.

“We handed it over to a local herpetologist who is taking care of it, and in the meantime we discovered another one as well, not as large, which was also rescued in turn,” the explorer added.

Frențiu said that there have been cases in which pythons have killed people on Indonesian islands, but “many more pythons and many more snakes end up in the locals’ kitchens than locals end up in the bellies of pythons.”