Anaconda, Eunectes murinus, Peruvian Amazon

Anaconda, Photo ©Rodrigo Tapia, Far South Expeditions

Crawling in the mud on a bank of the Ucayali, a tributary to the Amazon, a 6-metre Anaconda, Eunectes murinus approaches the river in the early morning light. Heaviest and second longest snake in the world, it is the most aquatic of boas, spending most of the time in or near the water, where it hunts mostly after dark for large prey including caiman, mammals like capibara and other large rodents and birds, which it attacks by holding them down with its powerful jaws while coiling around and crushing them dead under the power of its massive and muscular body.