Zoo History: Speak Softly and Carry a Big Snake

Few, if any, US Presidents could boast a more action-filled life than Theodore Roosevelt, both during office and in his years as a private citizen.  Among Roosevelt's many accomplishments, both in statesmanship, sport, and warfare, his contributions as a naturalist and conservationist are often overlooked.  And yet it was Roosevelt who established the first National Wildlife Refuge, who co-led a scientific expedition down a previously-uncharted tributary of the Amazon, and who was a recognized expert on wildlife.  It was also Roosevelt who played a key role in the formation of the New York Zoological Society, which we today call the Wildlife Conservation Society, and the opening of its flagship institution, the Bronx Zoo.

Roosevelt was a competitive man, both in and out of office, and always strove to have things be the most superlative - the biggest, the best, etc - and to this end, he posed a challenge for the young zoo.  Roosevelt would put up $1000 - more than a car cost, back in the day - for anyone who could provide the Bronx Zoo with a snake that measured over 30 feet long.  In 1912, reports came of a 33-foot python that was killed in Indonesia, but it was never confirmed.  Dead snakes make poor evidence, in many cases - snakeskin is quite stretchy, and so a skin can't be used to accurately estimate the size of the animal in life.  Over the years, the reward crept upwards - inflation, am I right? - until it peaked at $50,000 in 1980.  Yet despite all of that temptation, a snake that met Roosevelt's criteria was never found.  

But some came close.

It seemed like a champion might have been found in 1992, when an Indonesian leather company reached out to the Bronx after having captured a reticulated python that they said fit the bill.  The snake had been a long-time resident of a village in Borneo, but after a series raids into local chicken coops, the townspeople decided that it was time to part ways with their hungry neighbor.  The reticulated python of Southeast Asia is generally considered to be the longest snake on earth; green anacondas, from South America, tend to be much bulkier and heavier, but do not grow as long.  In those pre-internet days, communication between the zoo and company was slow and uncertain, but the snake was eventually boxed up and shipped to New York.  At the zoo, the python, named Samantha, was uncrated and measured (measuring a large snake is a tricky business, as snakes are not inclined to stretch out in a straight line).  And the result was... 21 feet, 175 pounds (an anaconda of that length would have weighed several times as much).  A big snake - about tied for the biggest I've ever seen in my life - but not 30 feet, by a long shot.

Still, Samantha was now in the Bronx, and it wasn't like they were going to send her back to Borneo.  For the next 10 years, the python continued her residence in the Big Apple... and she continued to grow during that time.  At the time of her death in November 2002, she had put on 100 pounds, as well as 5 feet, topping off at 26 feet long.  A very impressive snake, by any definition - but one that was still less than 90% of what Theodore Roosevelt's gold standard was.  Her obituary ran in the New York Times.

That same year, the Bronx Zoo officially rescinded its reward for a giant snake.  Reticulated pythons and other large constrictors have been heavily hunted for years for their hides, with the biggest snakes being the most sought after.  With their deaths, their genes for bigness likely went with them.  That makes it all the more unlikely that a truly giant python or boa is out there - but it's nice to think that, in a corner of the world somewhere far off the beaten path, a real giant still lives, unnoticed and unmolested.