Fact Check

Does This Video Show a Giant Anaconda Getting Caught in a Trap?

It's not just the chickens who are scared by what's seen in this video.

Published June 26, 2018

Updated Oct. 21, 2019
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Claim:
A video shows a giant anaconda getting stuck in a trap while trying to eat a chicken.

Our pages are filled with rumors about unusually large animals, and although we've covered everything from enormous sea spiders (props from a movie) to towering tortoises (also a prop), we are often asked questions about oversized snakes. Even absent the obvious Freudian implications of that particular fear, snakes can be frightening -- especially really large ones.

In June 2018, we came across a piece of curious footage that supposedly shows a giant anaconda getting caught in a trap while attempting to eat a chicken:

This video does show a snake getting caught in a trap, but the footage was manipulated to make the reptile appear larger than it actually was. At first glance, it really does appear that this snake is a "giant anaconda" swimming across a lake toward wooden barriers of at least six (or so) feet tall, and that it attempts to eat a full-grown chicken after sticking its head through a 55-gallon drum.

However, when you watch the original footage (below), it becomes clear that the "giant anaconda" is a much smaller snake, the "lake" is little more than a shallow stream, the wooden barriers are just a few inches tall, the 55-gallon drum is actually a pipe, and the full grown chicken is just a baby chick:

This snake is still relatively large, but it is not the "giant anaconda" that many viewers saw upon first glance. The original video also shows how this trap was built and includes several images which give a better view of the trap's relative size:

Viewers can also get a better look at the size of the snake near the end of the video when the trap maker holds up the the reptile for the camera:

We haven't been able to glean much more information about the snake trap. A second video featuring a nearly identical setup was reportedly taken in Cambodia.

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Updates

Oct. 21, 2019: A broken link to the original video has been replaced with an embedded version of the same original video.

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.

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