“Had previously seen this photo on TV but only recently found a version on the web. Apparently, the 4-m-long snake – which had recently eaten a female impala – is dead and died after trying to pass through the electric fence it is ‘attacking’. This all happened on Silent Valley Ranch in the Waterberg mountains of South Africa. A few photos exist showing people touching the dead snake, and it was cut open to reveal the impala inside [go here], so despite my initial scepticism I currently think all of this is true… Incidentally, rock pythons do sometimes swallow male impala, horns and all. What happens then? The antelope’s horns may fatally pierce the stomach and body wall (Mattison 1995), but such piercings are not always fatal: remarkably, the injuries may heal after the offending horns drop off as the prey’s body decomposes inside the snake (Isemonger 1962).”


Eliot,
Something didn’t seem right, the fence didn’t look electrified to me (no insulators, pole appeared to be metal). However, after following the link you can see that there were other separate and insulated wires that were touching the snakes body, not shown in this picture. Still seems a bit strange, though — usually, electric fences are set up to give a short jolt every second or so, but aren’t normally fatal.
-Ray
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