Longest wild snake specimen

The longest verifiably measured wild snake is a female reticulated python (Malayopython reticulatus), dubbed Ibu Baron (“The Baroness”), discovered in the Maros region of Sulawesi, Indonesia, in late 2025 and measured by Diaz Nugraha and Radu Frentiu to be 7.22 m (23 ft 8 in) from head to tail on 18 January 2026. Ibu Baron is now in the care of Budi Purwanto, a local conservationist from Maros County.

The assessment was conducted by Nugraha, who is a wildlife rescuer, conservationist and licensed snake handler from Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, and Frentiu, a Romanian-American natural-history photographer who has been an Indonesian resident in Bali for nearly two decades. An associate of Frentiu’s and previous GWR entomology expert, George Beccaloni – formerly of the UK’s Natural History Museum and now at The Charles Darwin Trust – also helped to relay details of the discovery.

As well as being measured with a surveyor’s tape, the snake was also weighed (in a big plastic sack) on scales usually reserved for bags of rice at 96.5 kg (213 lb), which is akin to a full-grown giant panda. It’s also worth noting that it appeared as if she had not recently eaten. There’s a good chance that under anaesthesia, when snakes’ bodies fully relax, Ibu Baron would measure even longer than 7.22 m, perhaps by as much as 10–15%. However, given the risks involved with anaesthetic, no animal should be "put under" unless for a necessary medical procedure.

When reports of the giant python first emerged, Purwanto quickly sought out the local people holding the snake in order to purchase her and safeguard her survival. Giant snakes are regarded as a serious threat to livestock and even people (particularly children) in Sulawesi, and as such they tend to be killed on discovery and then usually eaten. There is also a history of particularly sizeable specimens being sold into the lucrative illegal exotic pet trade. Purwanti has managed to step in on several occasions to make sure these remarkable reptiles avoid either of these fates, by undertaking custodianship of the snakes and housing them in spacious enclosures on his own land, ensuring the safety of the animals and local people alike.

Reticulated pythons are widely agreed to be the longest species of snake, typically reaching between 3 and 6 m (9 ft 10 in–19 ft 2 in), though giants greater than 6 m have long been documented; the largest individuals all tend to be females. In terms of maximum weight, the more bulky-bodied green anaconda (<i>Eunectes murinus/akayima</i>) of South and Central America is likely to surpass this species. The largest scientifically confirmed wild reticulated python in recent years was a 6.95-m (22-ft 10-in) female found in East Kalimantan, Borneo, in August 1999 after consuming a sun bear that had a tracking device on it, as discussed in the journal Raffles Bulletin of Zoology in 2005.

There have been historical reports of even longer wild reticulated pythons but documentary evidence of their measurements are scarce and, in the vast majority of cases, they sadly often do not generally live for very long after discovery, making the figures tricky to retroactively verify (especially in cases where measurements are based on the preserved skin of snakes alone which are liable to stretch and distort). For instance, there are anecdotes of one that was hunted in Sulawesi (then known as Celebes) in 1912 that was claimed to be 10 m (32 ft 10 in) long. More recently in 2016, there was a retic python found on a building site on the island of Penang, Malaysia, that was initially reported as just under 26 ft (7.9 m), though this was later revised to around 7.5 m (24 ft 7 in), but again a formal measurement was not conducted (or at least not filmed) and it sadly died only after a couple of days in captivity.

There have also been longer snakes in human care documented, including a reticulated python by the name of Medusa who measured 7.67 m (25 ft 2 in) long when measured in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, on 12 October 2011. However any animal in captivity has numerous advantages over their wild cousins when it comes to growing to epic proportions, given they receive regular meals and veterinary care and face no natural threats or survival challenges.