5-Foot Python Escapes, Bites 75-Year Old Man in the Toilet

A python attacked a guy on the genitals while he was on the toilet in Austria, authorities claimed, after the python escaped his neighbor's home and slithered down the sewers.

The 65-year-old man in Graz was bitten by the 5-foot-plus albino reticulated python while he sat in the toilet about 6 a.m. Monday, according to Reuters, citing a statement from Styrian police. The Police statement said "Shortly after he sat on the toilet the Graz resident by his own account felt a 'pinch' in the area of his genitals,"

The python is a nonvenomous Asian constrictor that may grow to be 29 feet long.

According to Reuters, the python allegedly escaped from a neighbor's flat and may have found its way to the man's toilet via sewers.

After being bitten by the escaped python, the 65-year-old man was transported to the hospital for minor injuries. According to authorities, a reptile specialist retrieved the snake and cleaned it before returning it to its owner. The man's next-door neighbor kept 11 nonvenomous boa constrictor snakes in his home. Authorities are now looking into the snake's owner on suspicion of inflicting bodily harm carelessly.

The Reticulated Python

Reticulated pythons are among the world's biggest python species. They may grow from 6 feet (1.8 m) to 20+ feet (6+ m) in length depending on gender, environmental circumstances, and individual morphs. They develop fast and can reach 12 feet (3.6 m) in just two years if fed properly. Reticulates are a subspecies of the Python family classified as "large snakes," and as such, there are no officially recognized subspecies. Several retic variations, or morphs, have been created by breeders, although the majority of these are not seen in the wild.

Captive-bred reticulated pythons have a high life expectancy; they can survive about 12 to 20 years.

Also read: Rattlesnakes Everywhere! California's Severe Drought is Forcing Rattlesnakes Out of Their Habitat

Can Snakes Actually Climb a Toilet Pipe?

A similar thing happened in Israel on Friday, a 35-year-old Israeli man was brought to the hospital, a snake lurking in a toilet bit a man's penis. The man was taken to a hospital and treated for "minor injuries," but testing revealed that the snake was not poisonous. Forrest Wickman of Slate collected a timeline of the tales and facts of toilet-based animal assaults in 2013.

A newspapers in 2010 devoted column space to the story of a 3-foot (0.9-meter) corn snake found in a 19th-floor toilet in New York City/ In an interview Jack Conrad, a herpetologist a snake specialist said the snake making its way up through the pipes was "within the realm of possibility." He mentioned that snakes are strong swimmers that can hold their breath for lengthy periods of time and are capable of swimming upward and squeezing through small areas if necessary.

Luckily, there's no guarantee that this snake even entered the pipes. It may have gotten in another way and curled up in the toilet to rest. In 2018, a North Carolina man discovered a snake in his toilet that he suspected had escaped from a tree and into a ventilation pipe on his home's roof.

Also read: Woman Bitten by Venomous Copperhead Snake Thrice Lived to Tell the Tale