My first post in a while. Nice to be back.

Well, this photo was in a book I was reading and it was mentioned that in 1959 a Belgian helicopter pilot took a picture of it-apparently, it was 40-50 feet in length. When they tried to get closer, it reared up 10 feet in a menacing manner, posing to strike if the helicopter would get closer.

Personally, it looks like an earthworm writhing on the ground, but that's just me. Anyways, it's hard people's word and there isn't really anything to scale the supposed "gigantic snake" with. For all we know, it could have been a serpent that was 10-15 feet long and they embellished the story for a good laugh(what I think). Maybe they misjudged the length-who knows?

Anyway, I don't find this photograph very likely to be a 40-50 foot long African Congo snake-especially since it's mostly flat, blurry land with nothing to scale the snake with. I'm an amateur cryptozoologist and it would've been nice if it was a better photo that seemed to show a snake of that length (along with something to scale it with ), but it seems this photograph has a very mundane explanation.

What are your thoughts? I'm sorry if there's a topic like this, but most forums I'm a member of have a rule on bumping "old" topics, usually the first page or anything older than two weeks to a month; I'm not sure what the "old topic" rule is here, but I did search for the picture on Google and there was a topic where the last reply was April 20, 2006-not a very good thing to bump.

i think there's already a lot of topic about this congo snake, or other giant snakes

I saw a few but they were pretty old, so I didn't want to necropost.

Amatuer cryptozoologists can beleive what they want, professional herpatologist (snake experts) say they can't get that big. I believe the experts.

What's the reason? I've just started getting into crytozoology, so I'd appreciate it. Is it something with having to do with their skeleton supporting their weight at that length?

We have already explained why and there's a quite strong discussion about it, try look for the similar topics, you'll know from there. I'm sorry, I'm too lazy too re-do it all over again...

Alright, thanks. It's no problem-I'm sure it gets annoying to answer the same topics over and over.

That picture is such an obvious composite-overlay fake I don't understand why it has any traction. THe 'snake' has completely different lighting tones and highlighting than the rest of the groundimage, and its so clean and shiny, no dust, no nothing...that it probably is a picture of a pet snake in a home aquarium overlaid on a low-level aerial photo of the scrubbrush.

I agree on this completely. the ground and brush around the snake appear slightly blurred, probably from the movement of the helicoptor as the picture was being taken. However, the snake itself stands ouot, and is crystal clear. Why is it not as blurry as the rest of the image??
I believe this was an attempt at an overlay. Not credible IMO.

I always thought it was just a normal snake or worm that someone took a picture of, then tried to pass off as a 40-50 snake.

Funny how a)there's nothing in the background to compare it to and b)they didn't get a picture of it rearing up.

10 feet is too high for a snake of such size and composition; it's supposed to be an African rock python, isn't it? It's a fairly sturdy snake, it's extremely unlikely it could rise its head 1/4 or 1/5's of the entire lenght above ground.

that photo has always bugged me, all i see is a snake in some mud, it dosent even look big, the way the photo is taken to me makes it just look like a normal snake - its hard to explain.

Theres nothing in this photo to suggest that this snake is actually as big as it says, and therefore I'm skeptical about this. Although, I don't think it would be completely impossible for a snake to be that big. I'm not saying there are snakes out there actually of this size, in fact its incredibly unlikely. But it could be possible.

I believe that eceptionally large specimens of Anaconda can even reach 70 to prehaps 80 feet but with recent deforestation etc. they may be dying out or extinct.

I read that back then they had experts go to the spot and scale it to the surroundings in the picture to determine its size.

Are those trees around it? Because if not it looks like just an ordinary snake.

There is no doubt that some species of snake can get really really big. I think there is an ongoing bounty for anything bigger than 20 meters for Amazonian constrictors. But no one has stepped up to claim a bonafide find! Thing about bringing in a snake skin is this: the skin can stretch by maybe 25% to 50%, so it is hard to determine the actual size of the animals when they were alive. But Nat Geo periodically shows footage of some really large ones.