Watch: Brown snake eats carpet python in suburban home near Brisbane

Name: Watch: Auckland Zoo's new exhibit
Uploaded: 2016-12-13T17:14:54+13:00
Duration: 49 s
Description: Reminiscent of the Murray-Darling region of southeast Australia, there are giant stick insects, eastern snake-necked turtles, redback spiders, lace monitors and vibrant Australian birds. Meet the strangely beautiful wildlife of Australia at Auckland Zoo this summer!

AAP

3 Jan, 2017 02:33 AM2 mins to read

Reminiscent of the Murray-Darling region of southeast Australia, there are giant stick insects, eastern snake-necked turtles, redback spiders, lace monitors and vibrant Australian birds. Meet the strangely beautiful wildlife of Australia at Auckland Zoo this summer!

The sight of a deadly brown snake eating a carpet python nearly its own size would be enough to give most people the creeps, but for snakecatchers Sally and Norman Hill it was a rare and fascinating display.

The pair, who run N&S Snake Catching, were called to a home in the Ipswich suburb of Goodna west of Brisbane Monday afternoon to see the chilling sight.

"We've never seen something like this before, it's very rare any snake catcher gets an opportunity to witness something like this," Sally told AAP.

"We always heard the old saying 'if you've got a carpet python you won't have a brown' so obviously that's a myth.

"We were on another job so it took us about half an hour to 40 minutes to get there," Sally said.

"We thought that by the time we got there he might have finished eating it but it did take a while.

"The venom would have killed the python straight away."

Sally said they stayed at the property for a few hours to allow the snake to finish its meal.

"We just put him into the bag, if you disturb them too much they'll regurgitate their meal and it's just a waste."

Here is a short video of the Eastern Brown eating the Carpet Python N&S Snake Catcher 0415136941 www.nssnakecatcher.com.au For media licensing please contact Caters News on video@catersnews.com
Posted by N&S Snake Catcher Ipswich, Brisbane & Logan 0415136941 on Sunday, 1 January 2017

Brown snakes usually eat mice, frogs and lizards, but have been known to eat other snakes, even other brown snakes.

Sally said the incident could have been caused by population pressure leading to competition for food, with the number of sightings of browns increasing in recent years.

"We started in 2015, so we have pretty much doubled what we were doing when we started, " she said.

The incident follows pictures being widely shared online of a large python eating a fully grown wallaby near Cairns on Sunday afternoon.

And a woman was bitten by a wild green tree snake at Australia Zoo north of Brisbane on Monday and was taken to hospital as a precaution.