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‘A tail popped out of the mouth’: Farmer pulls one snake out of another

Video still of a snake inside a snake.

Video still of a snake inside a snake.

Snakes have eyes bigger than their stomachs, a pair of New South Wales sheep farmers have discovered, after pulling an entire snake from the corpse of another.

When Jill spotted what she believed to be a venomous king brown coming too close for comfort, her safety and that of the animals at her sheep station was paramount.

“I usually leave these things to my husband, but it was just over the fence and I was able to kill it with a shovel,” she said.

However, upon doing so she discovered the snake may have just finished a rather long lunch.

“When I killed it … a tail popped out of the mouth,” she said.

Jill said it took her a moment to work out what she was looking at before realising there was another snake inside the first.

Her husband pulled the tail from the mouth, to reveal the reptile had swallowed an entire eastern brown.

“The one inside was as long as the one outside. [It was] one of the weirdest things I’ve seen,” Jill said.

After reviewing the vision, Sydney-based snake catcher Harley Jones said, based on the size of the two snakes, it is possible the greedy larger snake may have already been dead.

Snakes, particularly browns and red-bellied blacks are known as cannibals, sometimes eating other snakes to their own detriment.

“There is a limit to the size a snake can eat,” Mr Jones said.

“A one-metre snake can’t eat another one-metre snake, it’s not going to work.

Mr Jones said if large prey were not regurgitated, it could cause the snake’s stomach to rupture.

While Jill said she would not usually kill snakes and would have preferred to call a snake catcher, it is not always an option in remote areas with no wildlife groups within 100 kilometres of the property.

Mr Jones said snakes were a protected species and killing them came with a $10,000 fine and a two-year jail sentence.

However, there is an exception if a venomous snake poses a genuine threat to life or safety.

Mr Jones said the best action was to stay away from the reptiles and call an authority to remove it.

“Ninety-eight per cent of people who get bitten by snakes are either trying to catch or kill a snake,” he said.

“The other 2 per cent are really, really unlucky.”

-ABC

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