African rock pythons killing humans like ‘getting struck by lightning twice’

It is extremely rare for an African rock python to kill humans, reptile experts said Tuesday after hearing of the deaths of two boys in New Brunswick who police say were killed by such a snake.

“It’d be like getting struck by lightning twice in one day,” said Matt Korhonen, general curator at Little Ray’s Reptile Zoo in Ottawa.

“The fact that this snake escaped … and killed two kids is very much a freak accident.”

Korhonen, who has worked at the Ottawa reptile zoo since 2000, said rock pythons are not known for killing humans, though they are an aggressive species of serpent that can grow to be very large and powerful.

“That doesn’t mean that they attack and kill people,” he said. “It’s just that they’re very nervous.”

The RCMP said the 45-kilogram python escaped from a floor-to-ceiling glass tank inside an apartment in Campbellton, N.B., through a vent and slithered through a ventilation pipe before the weight of the animal forced the pipe to collapse, sending it to a living room where Noah and Connor Barthe slept Sunday night. The bodies of the four- and six-year-olds were discovered Monday morning and the snake has since been put down.

The Mounties said Monday they believed the 4.3-metre long snake strangled the boys but on Tuesday investigators said they are waiting for the results of an autopsy on the children as well as a necropsy on the snake before commenting further on the cause of death.

James Bogart, a retired professor and reptile specialist at the University of Guelph in Ontario, said it doesn’t make sense to him that the snake would strangle the two boys and then leave their bodies alone.

“They’re not malicious creatures — they go after things for food,” Bogart said.

“It just doesn’t make sense to me that it would actually strangle two boys and leave them. I’m not sure why it would kill one and then kill the other one. It really doesn’t make sense.”

Korhonen said if the snake constricted the boys, it was doing so not out of self-defence but rather out of hunger.

“If they were constricted and killed by the snake, they were seen as prey,” he said. “The snake wasn’t defending himself. He was trying to eat.”

Korhonen said thousands of rock pythons are kept in people’s homes as pets across North America and they don’t attack. Still, he warned that the animals shouldn’t be kept as pets, given their size and potential to kill.

“Having any animal that’s capable of killing you in your home is probably just not a good idea,” Korhonen said.

“Giant snakes — I would never say that that’s a good idea.”