Divers test limits of giant anaconda's patience by repeatedly shoving video camera into its face
Wildlife experts are always trying to tell us that nature’s predators are not as monstrous as our media makes them out to be. Even as they insist that not every encounter with a shark will result in us getting extravagantly murdered or that not all snakes are hellbent on squeezing us to death and eating us up whole, though, it takes constant reminders of how patient the world’s animals can be in order for many of us to think of them with anything but blind terror.
The latest instance of this is a pair of scuba divers who, upon swimming up to a giant anaconda just trying to chill out in a river, decided to jam their cameras into its face over and over again in a monumentally bold test of its snaky kindness.
According to the Newsflare video’s description, the anaconda is 7 meters (just under 23 feet) long and was filmed this past July “lurking in the waters of the Formoso River” in Brazil. The pair of scuba divers shown swimming around the enormous snake as it checks them out and tries several times to excuse itself from their visit are Bartolomeo Bove and Juca Ygarape. Bove told Newsflare that they were filming in an area of Brazil whose waters are the only ones clear enough in South America to allow divers to swim with anacondas.
“As shown in the footage, the anaconda swims calm and peaceful, completely indifferent to our presence,” he says. This is true in the sense that it doesn’t attack and kill the two divers for bugging the hell out of it with their camera, but it doesn’t seem entirely indifferent the few times its shown hefting its giant, scaly body away from them in what reads like the snake equivalent of politely encouraging someone to fuck off. Still, as Bove says, the video he and Ygarape shot does help dispel “the myth that [the anaconda] is an aggressive and violent creature.” As we see it put up with more annoyance than a house cat would tolerate from an overly affectionate owner, we realize that, yes, Bove is right and anacondas have received a bad rap. Despite what a ponytailed Jon Voight may have you led you to believe, they’re not only peaceful snakes, but downright saintlike in their patience.
[via Digg]
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