New photographs and a video have recently emerged of an 18 ft anaconda that was captured in Guyana’s tropical rainforests in 2009.
Niall McCann, a biologist from Cardiff, Wales, was only able to make the catch several weeks after he initially spotted the snake during his exploration with fellow traveller Dr. Robert Pickles, with whom he had set off to South America in search of “giant otters.” The duo discovered a river heavily populated with wildlife which was never before been surveyed by scientists.
“The animals there had never seen people before, so you could get incredibly close to them,” McCann told Yahoo! News in an exclusive interview.
McCaan described the Rewa River as a “Garden of Eden” and also revealed that seven anacondas, four of which were over 16 ft long, were spotted during the three-week adventure.
McCaan, who was then 29, reflected on their first encounter with the reptile and declared that it was “frighteningly enormous.”
“When you first see something of that size, you just don’t know how it will respond. We were very scared, we had heard innumerable horror stories of them taking people and killing them – you know this is a seriously dangerous animal you are faced with,” McCann said.
He explained that on the day they decided to go in for the catch, they were very confident after having several experiences with other wildlife during their journey.
“We spent about 20 minutes preparing the landscape so we could encourage it to move inland, we didn’t want it to go into the river as it could have escaped,” McCann told Yahoo! News.
“It would stretch out then coil, ready to strike, then stretch out and coil again. I said, ‘right, next time it stretches I’m going to go for it.’ It started to stretch out and I just leapt on top of it with both hands behind its head, my knee on its back and the other chaps piled on behind me.”
“It was a struggle for the first 30 seconds or so as it tried to move its head from side to side. It tried to scratch at us then Ash, the head guide, came round the front and grabbed it by the jaws as I lifted it up – wrapping its jaws with tape so it could no longer bite us.”
