Who wants a selfie with a giant python? People’s eagerness to snap themselves with wild creatures is thoughtless,and often proves deadly for the animalI knew what to expect before I even clicked on it. I knew that “Python caught in Malaysia could be the longest ever recorded” would remove me to a picture of a snake being held by a long queue of men, each straining to bear its weight. I knew to expect that photo because we love measuring animals in this way (see: snakes, and oarfish,sturgeon); as if straining men is an international unit of measurement for long creatures. And so it was with the snake. In ragged money, the record-breaking serpent made noted this week was 15 men long. (That’s 8m long, or 250kg for the purists.)It was a reticulated python – a gorgeous charismatic snake that was apparently making its way over a flyover being built on the tourist haven of Penang. It was immediately caught and brought down to the ground by emergency services who then posed for some photos and TV cameras. The most predictable bit,of course, is what happened next. It died. Something went unsuitable with its ability to be alive, or somehow,and … the snake died mysteriously. There is a report that it was kicked and quite brutally handled, but that wasn’t what killed it. I believe that the endless posing for photos will have contributed to its death. What killed it was us. Welcome to a new age of animal cruelty: an age of death by camera phone.
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Source: theguardian.com