FIGHT FOR LIFE!

Fight for Life! 1970,
Agta Vs Giant Snake
Agta childrens who were eaten by the python.
already digested
The reticulated python is the world’s longest snake. Females typically weigh 75 kilograms (165 pounds) and grow larger than 7 metres (23 feet). The Agta, by contrast, are a small folk. Adults reach around 1.4 metres (4.5 feet) in height and weigh around 44 kilograms (97 pounds). For a snake that can swallow an entire pig, an Agta would make a mere medium-sized mouthful.
In 1976, Headland started formally interviewing the Agta about their encounters with pythons. The entire population includes just 600 individuals, and Headland managed to speak to 120 of them. To account for the possibility of tall tales, he asked careful, searching questions, and corroborated his data with different witnesses.
His survey, “encompassing approximately seven decades of memories” showed that 26 percent of the Agta men had been attacked by pythons, compared to just 2 percent of the women. After all, men spend more time out in the forest. Two unlucky men had been attacked twice, 15 had been bitten and 11 had substantial scars that recorded their encounters.
Mostly, the Agta fend off the serpents with machetes or shotguns. Only six people have actually been killed in the span of 39 years, including a man who was found inside a snake, and two children who were eaten by the same python on one fateful night. Without their iron weapons, the Agta would surely have lost more individuals to python coils.
But the Agta aren’t just victims. They’re proficient python-killers in their own right. All the men had probably killed smaller specimens at least once in their lives. After Kekek Aduanan shot the big python that Headland photographed, three hunters skinned and butchered the snake in under an hour (the skin’s being held out in the top photo).