JAKARTA: It’s a fussy eater, apparently. But when you are longer than a doubledecker bus, and weigh as much as six grown men, you can afford to be. Certainly, the owners of a zoo in Indonesia haven’t been quibbling over the dietary needs of an enormous python, which prefers to eat four fierce brown dogs every month.

The snake, they claimed on Monday, is the longest and heaviest ever captured. Doing so was no mean feat in itself. According to reports, it took 65 men and the blessing of a tribal leader to snare it.

Officials at the zoo in Curugsewu, central Java, told the Republika newspaper that the reticulated python is 14.85 metre long and has a maximum body circumference of 85cm. It weighs, they say, 447kg. It was impossible to verify the claim on Monday because the only photos available were of the black and brown reptile curled up, apparently asleep.

The Guinness Book of World Records lists the longest captured snake as a 9.75m reticulated python found on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 1912. The heaviest is a 182.76kg Burmese python in Illinois, USA.

Reticulated pythons, found across southeast Asia, are considered the longest snake species but adults usually measure only between three and six metres long. —Dawn/The Guardian News Service.