Disturbing images have emerged of a huge snake dangling a dead possum from the wooden rafters.
The footage taken on the Gold Coast shows a coastal carpet python stretching from the roof and almost reaching the floor as it grabs the dead possum.
The snake can be seen grabbing the possum by the head with its hundred or so teeth, a ‘kiss of death’, and coiling itself to pull it into the rafters.
Although the possum would be enough to last the snake for about a month, it decided to abandon its prey after dropping it to the ground.
The eating process usually involves striking, constricting and eating their prey, and if this is disrupted it can result in them being deterred from continuing the killing.
Disturbing footage has shown the moment a coastal carpet python tried to pull a brushtail possum into a rafter with a bite to the head (pictured)
Only adult pythons – which can grow up to 3 meters in length – are known to attack possums, as they require more force to kill than smaller bat and lizard pythons.
Sunshine Coast snake catcher Daniel Busstra believes the possum had most likely been sleeping on one of the wooden beams in the rafters when the python caught its scent and chased it.
“It would have gone up to the rafters, hit it, wrapped it around and strangled it, and as it strangled it, it would have lost its balance,” he told Ne.ws.com.au.
After losing its balance and grabbing onto the rafters with just the tip of its tail, the snake would have had little strength to pull its prey up, choosing to leave it behind instead.
Pythons of similar size have been seen to easily lift possums to higher areas if they have a better anchor to hold on to.
In 2020, a python was spotted in Mooloolaba by snake catcher Stuart McKenzie feeding on a possum while hanging from a gutter.
Mr McKenzie said the snake took about an hour to digest the possum ‘while it was hanging upside down’.
The snake most likely abandoned the prey after not having the strength to pull the opossum all the way up, causing it to fall and disrupting its feeding habit
Witnessing a python kill a possum is considered relatively rare, as both animals are nocturnal feeders and usually interact in the dead of night.
While the images may be confronting to some, Busstra said it was a natural result of a “healthy ecosystem.”
‘The snake has to eat and in a way they all work together. As much as people love to see it, it has to be done,” he said.
Although dangerous to medium-sized mammals, birds and lizards, pythons pose no threat to humans unless provoked.