Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Her­petol­o­gist and cu­ra­tor at the Na­tion­al?Aquar­i­um in Bal­ti­more, USA, John Sey­ja­gat, be­lieves the 220-pound ana­con­da dis­cov­ered in Ca­roni on De­cem­ber 30 could be one of the largest snakes seen in the south­ern hemi­sphere with­in the last 30 to 40 years.

Sey­ja­gat, who was born in T&T and was for­mer­ly the se­nior keep­er at the Em­per­or Val­ley Zoo, will re­turn to Trinidad on Tues­day to in­spect the snake, which is 17 feet, nine inch­es long. It was cap­tured by se­cu­ri­ty guards on pa­trol near a pri­vate road op­po­site the Ca­roni cre­ma­tion site.

Since its cap­tured it has re­mained at the zoo, where it is be­ing kept in a glass and con­crete en­clo­sure and is re­ceiv­ing reg­u­lar vet­eri­nary care. Its widest part mea­sures 32 inch­es in cir­cum­fer­ence but de­spite spec­u­la­tion that it was preg­nant, an ul­tra­sound on Wednes­day showed no signs of preg­nan­cy.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian yes­ter­day, Sey­ja­gat said the ana­con­da would be the largest one he had ever seen in per­son, adding that in the 1980s he cap­tured a 14-foot ana­con­da in Matu­ra, along the north­east coast of Trinidad.

Sey­ja­gat said, based on pic­tures and in­for­ma­tion he has re­ceived, the snake "looks to be in good health and has no par­a­sites on its body."

He said he knew blood was found in sam­ples of the snake's mu­cus as a re­sult of abra­sions caused to its throat af­ter be­ing tied up with a rope.

"Right now," he said, "the zoo is the best place for her to al­low for med­ical ob­ser­va­tion, reg­u­la­tion of in­ter­nal heat, rest and re­lax­ation."

Al­though on Wednes­day pres­i­dent of the Zo­o­log­i­cal So­ci­ety Gupte Lutch­me­di­al es­ti­mat­ed the ana­con­da to be around ten years old, Sey­ja­gat be­lieves the snake must be be­tween 16 and 18.

He said a snake is born at around two feet long and grows rapid­ly at a rate of around a foot a year.

Ex­plain­ing why it might have been dis­cov­ered slith­er­ing across a pri­vate road, Sey­ja­gat said it was most like­ly in an at­tempt to gath­er heat from the sun, ow­ing to low tem­per­a­tures at this time of the year.

"If that snake ate some­thing re­cent­ly, with­in the fol­low­ing weeks it would have to ther­moreg­u­late in or­der to di­gest its food. This is prob­a­bly why she came out in the af­ter­noon and was dis­cov­ered."

One of his aims will be to find out where the snake came from.

He said one con­cern he had about re­lo­cat­ing the an­i­mal to the wild as planned was that ana­con­das have a "home range" and the snake might have a ten­den­cy to go in search of its pre­vi­ous home.?

He said in that case it could end up on an­oth­er road­way or in a fam­i­ly's back­yard and would most like­ly be killed, ow­ing to the fear that most peo­ple have of snakes.