Want to make a quick $50,000? Go out and catch yourself a snake.

But it can't be just any old snake. To earn the Wildlife Conservation
Society's $50,000 reward, the snake must be at least 30 feet long. And
it must be delivered alive and in good health, accompanied by all
necessary permits and paperwork, to the Bronx Zoo in New York City.

Now, before you embark on the Great Snake Hunt, there's something else
you should know.

The reward was first offered in the early 1900s by President Theodore
Roosevelt, a close friend of William T. Hornaday, the Bronx Zoo's
director at the time. And the money--initially $1,000, then $10,000,
and now $50,000--is still unclaimed.

Why? Because it's quite possible that snakes don't grow that large.

Throughout history, explorers' tales abound of giant snakes measuring
30, 40, and even 50 feet in length. For example, in 1907 a British
adventurer named Percy Fawcett claimed to have shot a giant anaconda
(Eunectes murinus) measuring 62 feet. Since Fawcett didn't think to
bring back the carcass, few people believed his claim.

In 1959, a Belgian helicopter pilot named Remy Van Lierde is said to
have photographed a giant snake as it slithered across the Congo
floor. The snake was estimated at about 40 or 50 feet in length. But
again, no carcass was collected to confirm this rather sensational
report. Furthermore, the purported photograph is about as convincing
as a black-and-white picture of Godzilla or Mothra.

Many snake skins have been accurately measured at more than 30 feet.
However, as most leatherworkers know, a snake's skin can be easily
stretched without obvious distortion, adding as much as a quarter of
the skin's original length.

Just how big can a snake really get? The Guinness Book of World
Records credits a reticulated python (Python reticulatus) that was
slain on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 1912 as the longest
snake ever reliably measured. According to Guinness, this whopper was
39.4 feet in length. A close second, Guinness maintains, was a
38.3-foot African rock python (Python sebae) shot on the Ivory Coast
in 1932.

Alas, you can't always believe what you read in print, even in
Guinness. In his 1931 book Snakes of the World, the renowned
herpetologist (snake expert) Raymond Ditmars wrote, "In all of these
years, in an endeavor to obtain record measurements [of reticulated
pythons] from authoritative sources, the figures stand at 33 feet and
another a few inches over 30 feet." Of the African rock python, the
former Bronx Zoo curator stated, "It appears doubtful if this snake
attains a length of much over 20 feet and the average run of adult
examples is 16 to 17 feet."
Want to Learn More?

Judge for yourself: Is this "giant snake" real?

Want to read more about humongous reptiles? Check out Tales of Giant
Snakes.

Find out more about the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Fact overrules fiction in the case of Fawcett's giant anaconda as
well. While the film Anaconda claims that these animals can grow to 40
feet, scientific studies indicate otherwise. In a recent survey of
more than 1,000 wild anacondas in Brazil, the largest was around 17
feet and 100 pounds.

"It's possible that there are a few giants out there," says John
Behler, curator of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Department of
Herpetology. However, these would have to be extremely rare.

"Out of a world population of 5 billion people, there are probably
fewer than a dozen over 8 feet tall," Behler points out.

The largest snake ever held in captivity was the aptly named Colossus,
a reticulated python in the collection of Pittsburgh's now-defunct
Havilland Zoo. When Colossus arrived from Thailand in the mid-1950s,
he measured a respectable 22 feet.

With good care and a nutritious diet that included a freshly killed
pig every month, the super-size serpent thrived and grew. At the time
of his death in April 1966, Colossus had reached a record length of
28.5 feet and a weight of more than 300 pounds. The reptile's remains
were sent to the Carnegie Museum for preservation--and, in the
X-Files-esque tradition of many great animal anomalies, were promptly
lost by the museum's curatorial staff.

Until recently, the distinction of being the biggest, if not the
baddest, snake in the world belonged to Samantha, a 26-foot-long
reticulated python at--where else?--the Bronx Zoo. When Samantha died
of old age in November 2002, the crown was passed to Marci, a 25-foot
reticulated python on display at the San Antonio Zoo.

"It's conceivable that Colossus could've gotten even larger," says Ray
Bamrick, lead reptile keeper at the Pittsburgh Zoo.

Many reptile species experience what is called indeterminate growth,
Bamrick says. That is, much like the Energizer Bunny, they keep
growing and growing and growing throughout their lives.

The pace of this growth is determined by the temperature of the
snake's surroundings and the availability of food. Juvenile pythons
grow rapidly, shedding their skins five to seven times per year. As
they mature, their growth rate slows down. As adults, they shed their
scaly dermal layers about two or three times a year, Bamrick says.

Behler dismisses this notion of continual growth as rubbish. He says
that data from catch-and-release studies of snakes in the wild suggest
that adults reach a peak size, then gradually diminish in size over
the years.
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"Imagine that you have a sausage casing that's stuffed with a modest
amount of meat," Behler explains. "When you measure the casing, it's
going to be one length. But take the same casing and really pack it
with meat. Now the skin becomes more like a ball--it gets shorter and
rounder. That's what happens, more or less, with a big, well-fed snake."

Becoming well-fed in the wild is no mean feat for a python, anaconda,
or boa constrictor snake. All three of these species are constrictors.
Lacking venom, these snakes capture prey by coiling their bodies
around it. By tightening the coils, the constrictors literally squeeze
the life out of the struggling captive.

"Pythons and boas seek rather moderate-sized prey and lurk in specific
locations where they find such quarry," Ditmars wrote. Thus they may
be required to wait for weeks between meals--not a great method for
growing rapidly, that's for sure.

"As to pythons swinging from trees and grasping and constricting
cattle as some stories go, all I can say is that writers of the same
have surprising imaginations," Ditmars observed. "A big anaconda would
be satisfied in capturing a 50-pound capybara. It would probably be
afraid of a full grown tapir and retreat from it, but [would] make a
stroke for a young one, possibly a third-grown individual, and be able
to engulf it."

It's the law of the jungle, though: Those not busy eating are busy
being eaten. Snake meat is a delicacy in Southeast Asia--and with the
ever-increasing human population in that part of our planet, the
demand for sources of protein remains on the rise.

That may be another reason why long snakes are in such short supply,
Behler suggests. It is also part of the reason that the Wildlife
Conservation Society is still offering the prize. By putting one of
these giants on public display, the WCS will be showing the world one
of the many natural wonders we'd be missing if we fail to conserve the
planet's dwindling resources.
David George Gordon
David George Gordon is an award-winning science writer with a penchant
for the bizarre. He is the author of The Eat-A-Bug Cookbook and The
Compleat Cockroach.