'Out of Jurassic Park': Monster 1.8-metre snake captured in Queensland
An enormous red-bellied black snake has been captured in Queensland.
The snake was spotted by a groundskeeper at Belmont Shooting Range, east of Brisbane, when he saw its head coming out of a hole under a concrete slab.
Bryce Lockett – from Snake Catchers Brisbane, Ipswich, Logan and Gold Coast – said the monster snake was about 1.8 metres long.
“All in all, it is a very solid snake and a very decent-sized snake,” Mr Lockett said.
The snake catcher also explained why the red-bellied black was unusually thick.
“It all comes down to the food demands. So obviously he had a good source of food and he was well fed – hence the size of him,” Mr Lockett said.
“Also, a defensive mechanism for the red-bellied black snake is to flatten their neck out so they look bigger.”
But Mr Lockett did say the rest of the snakes body was “solidly built anyway”.
He said on average red-bellied black snakes reach about 1.2 to 1.4 metres in length, but there have been reports of snakes measuring in at 2.5 metres.
Mr Lockett has yet to come across one that large.
“When the cane toads were first introduced here [Queensland], it kind of wiped them [red-bellied black snakes] out a little bit,” Mr Lockett said.
“Now the stock of them are starting to get back up there again and you start to see them avoid the cane toads and they get the size back to them.”
Despite being a venomous snake, red-bellied black snakes are “placid”, according to Mr Lockett.
He shared a photo of the large snake on his Facebook page, drawing more than 1000 comments by the time of publication.
“That’s gotta be the biggest one of those that I’ve seen. Must be good hunting around,” one woman said.
“That’s a whopper!” another wrote.
A third person said: “If that snake is a red belly black snake I think it might come out.. of Jurassic Park. That’s massive.”
But others were not as impressed.
“Will have nightmares from seeing this picture,” a social media user wrote.
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