PAPUA NEW GUINEA SNAKEBITE PROJECT
BLOOD AND GUTS

Then as we turned for home we came across a large adult Southern white-lipped python (Leiopython hoserae) dead in the road. It was not a road kill as such, the bush knife wounds proved it had been killed in the bush and thrown onto the road, a common practise in PNG. Its head was too mangles for a photograph but I did photograph the ventral side so I could record ventral and subcaudal counts later. It was a male, its hemipenes were extruding from its cloaca. Ben and I obtained its measurement but cutting lengths of thick grass to match its snout-to-vent length and tail length and I measured these later (SVL = 1.85m, total length = 2.125m). I then obtained a portion of liver with my Leatherman from which I would take more sterile sections with dissection scissors later for DNA. I then removed the snake from the road and put it in the dense roadside grass - something will benefit from its demise.

And so today started and ended with Blood and Guts.

Bush-knifed Southern white-lipped python Leiopython hoserae	Photographed ventrally for recording ventral and subcaudal scale counts later
Ben measuring the python using thick stems of kunai grass
Mark removing a section of liver with his Leatherman. His bush knife was used to cut the kunai grass.	and the final sample taken before the body was moved off the road

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