Python

pi'thon, a large serpent of the Old World. The name is applied to a family of sixty or seventy species inhabiting the tropical regions of Africa and Asia. These serpents are allied to the boa constrictor and the anaconda of South America. The reticulated or spotted python inhabits the jungles of the Malay peninsula, Sumatra, and Borneo. It is the largest serpent of the Old World. It attains a length of twenty-five feet. It is an open question whether this python or the anaconda is the largest serpent in the world. Like its relatives, this eastern python is not venomous. It does not attack man. It lives on monkeys, birds, goats, wild pigs, wild fowl, rabbits, the small hog deer, pheasants, and jungle fowl. Occasionally one comes out of the jungle at night and forces its way through the palisades of a village and robs the hen roosts. In such a case the villagers are likely to capture the python and sell it to some dealer in wild animals. Each year the dealers of Singapore ship the menageries of the western world about fifty specimens of the reticulated and black-tailed pythons, the two largest species. It is easier to obtain a python than a boa constrictor or an anaconda. For that reason, this serpent is the one usually shown in collections of large animals. In captivity the python is fed once in two weeks with full feathered, large chickens or rabbits. Sometimes it refuses to eat. In that case a string of rabbits is tied to a pole and thrust down the python's throat. Kipling is the first author to render the python even endurable. Read his account of wise old Kaa in the Jungle Books.

The limbless serpent can outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete and crush the tiger.--Owen.