An alarming viral video shows a toddler playing with a huge python snake in East Java, Indonesia.
Pythons are capable of squeezing large animals to death and swallowing them whole – yet the child shows no fear.
In fact, the infant appears to be thoroughly enjoying himself as he sits among the python’s coiled body as though it’s an armchair.
He appears to see it all as a game as the python’s body constricts around him.
The minute it gets too close for comfort, the toddler hops out and lies across the moving reptile.
He crawls over the python, with clearly no knowledge of how dangerous the creature could be.
At one point he rolls off so he runs to the head of the python and picks it up, grinning at the person filming.
He curls the head back on itself – but the snake doesn’t seem to mind being manhandled.
When the reptile drops itself back to the floor, the boy picks it up once more before the video clip ends.
Luckily no harm comes to the child despite the dangerous nature of pythons.
This has led one viewer to speculate that the snake could be a family pet.
“Had to have been a family pet or something,” commented on the video. “No one in right mind would sit there and film a child playing with a huge snake like that if they didn’t think it was safe and docile.
“Snake clearly has had interaction with children before or it would have struck in defence, even if it wasn’t seeing the child as food (sic).”
Some pythons only eat four to five times a year. They kill their prey by wrapping themselves around it and constricting it.
They will swallow the animal whole and can eat very large animals, digesting them slowly over a period of time.
Pythons are in fact kept as pets around the world and can live for up to 40 years in captivity.
At San Diego Zoo, their pythons are fed thawed rodents and rabbits, according to the zoo’s website.
However, earlier this year there was an incident of a 54-year-old woman being killed and eaten whole by a 23-foot reticulated python in Indonesia.
The incident came one year after a 25-year-old man was also eaten by a reticulated python in the same country.
According to National Geographic, such attacks are rare, but deforestation from Indonesia’s palm oil industry could be removing the snakes’ natural prey.
Recently, a viral video emerged of the horrible moment a man was gored by a stampeding bull in Spain.
