A confronting video showing a python that swallowed a family pet has exploded across social media this week, with the clip continuing to gain traction and prompting fresh warnings from snake catchers about the risks to roaming animals during peak snake season.<\/p>\n
The footage, filmed on the Sunshine Coast at Stony Creek and posted online, has been widely reshared and is still circulating heavily, drawing tens of thousands of views and a flood of comments from shocked viewers and pet owners sharing their own close calls.<\/p>\n
The video captures a licensed snake catcher removing a large, visibly distended python from beneath a raised home, where it had taken shelter after consuming a cat.<\/p>\n
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By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n The reptile, swollen through the body and stretching beyond two metres, is slowly guided out from its hiding place as the catcher explains what likely occurred.<\/p>\n In the clip, catcher Brandon \u201cGiffo\u201d Gifford describes the size of the snake and the scale of its meal.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re a snake eating a cat, you\u2019ve got some size to you,\u201d Mr Gifford says in the clip as he removes the bulging reptile, which appears to be more than 2m in length.<\/p>\n He acknowledges the emotional impact such incidents have on families and says a meal that large significantly reduces how often the snake will need to hunt again.<\/p>\n He goes on to say it\u2019s \u201cobviously a tragedy to lose a pet like that\u201d and it was \u201ca massive food item\u201d which meant the snake would not need to hunt \u201cfor another month or so\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter eating a lot, they can grow very quickly, or they can actually go for years without growing much at all,\u201d he says in the video.<\/p>\n He adds that snakes are driven by heat detection rather than recognising what type of animal they are targeting.<\/p>\n \u201cThey don\u2019t \u2026 distinguish what the animal is they\u2019re just picking up the heat source\u201d.<\/p>\n Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24\/7 owner Stuart McKenzie said the renewed attention on the clip comes at a time of heightened snake movement, with warmer conditions increasing encounters between reptiles and domestic animals.<\/p>\n While cases of pets being killed and eaten are not everyday events, they are not unheard of either, with his team hearing about roughly \u201ca dozen a year\u201d.<\/p>\n Cats are more commonly taken than dogs, largely because they are more likely to wander beyond enclosed yards. He warned that owners who assume their pets are only hunting rodents may be underestimating the risk.<\/p>\n He said owners who believed their cats were only \u201cchasing rats\u201d while out and about needed to understand they were really \u201cchasing anything that moves\u201d.<\/p>\n Other small household animals \u2014 including guinea pigs, chickens and birds \u2014 are also frequent targets. Dogs are more often bitten, particularly by venomous species, after mistaking snakes for toys or attempting to grab them.<\/p>\n Such reports come in \u201cdaily\u201d, according to Mr McKenzie.<\/p>\n If a bite is suspected, he urged immediate action.<\/p>\n Mr McKenzie said owners should \u201crush it to the vet\u201d even if there are no obvious wounds, warning symptoms can be delayed and an animal\u2019s condition can deteriorate in a \u201cmatter of minutes\u201d.<\/p>\n Many commenters reacting to the still-viral clip say they or people they know have lost pets in similar encounters, reinforcing the warning that snake risks remain very real for roaming animals.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople need to take it very seriously,\u201d Mr McKenzie said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A confronting video showing a python that swallowed a family pet has exploded across social media this week,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":262237,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[85,111,139,69,3654,147,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-262236","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-new-zealand","10":"tag-newzealand","11":"tag-nz","12":"tag-queensland","13":"tag-science","14":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=262236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/262236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/262237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=262236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=262236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=262236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}