An enormous snake captured at a Malaysian construction site last week recently died after laying an egg.
Measuring 26 feet long and weighing some 551 pounds, the reticulated python is thought to be the world's longest documented snake.
The current record-holder is a 25.2-foot-long reticulated python named Medusa. According to the Guinness World Records, Medusa was captured in October 2011 at her home in Kansas City, Missouri, where she is a star at The Edge of Hell Haunted House.
Native to Southeast Asia, reticulated pythons are the longest snakes in the world. The 26-foot serpent was spotted last Thursday at a construction site in Paya Terubong, part of the island of Penang. Construction workers immediately called emergency services, but it took 30 minutes for officials to wrangle the beast.
"It is eight meters in length and weighs about 250kg," said Herme Herisyam, an official from the Penang Civil Defense Department, which caught the snake.
Or more than 26 feet long and 550 pounds. If official measurements confirm this, it will in fact take the record for world's longest snake.
Officials have since reported that the snake died Monday after giving birth, although it is not yet clear why it perished. However, video footage taken of the recently captured pregnant snake showed a man kicking it.
Reticulated pythons are indeterminate growers, meaning they continue to grow indefinitely but at a slower rate as they get older. These snakes are also slender, so they're not the heaviest of snakes.
What concerns scientists is the snake's mysterious death. Stephen Secor, a professor in the department of Biological Sciences at the University of Alabama, who wasn't involved with the Malaysian snake's capture, said that a snake that large could have easily laid upwards of 75 eggs at one time.
"I don't know why the snake died," Secor said. "It probably didn't die because it laid an egg."
It could be that the snake was laying eggs at the construction site, and one egg got lodged inside of its body when it was captured. Or the python may have just started laying eggs when it died. Secor says a necropsy - or animal autopsy - would help solve the mystery, as a pathologist or other doctor would be able to see if more eggs were left inside of the snake.
Lodged eggs can block other eggs that have yet to be laid and cause medical problems. While this could be the cause of death, snakes are sometimes able to reabsorb lodged eggs. Alternatively, being captured could have literally scared, or traumatized, the poor python to death.
