Columbus Zoo and Aquarium longest snake in captivity dies

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Longest Snake Living in Captivity Dies in Zoo - CBS News

An Ohio zoo says the longest snake living in captivity has died.

The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium says workers found the 24-foot python Wednesday morning dead from an apparent tumor.

The snake was named Fluffy. It held the Guinness World Record as the longest snake living in captivity. It was about as long as a moving van and as thick as a telephone pole. It weighed 300 pounds.

The 18-year-old reticulated python had drawn large crowds since the zoo got it in 2007.

Reticulated pythons are named for the cross-hatching patterns on their skin and average 10 to 20 feet long. The largest recorded one was 32 feet, 9 1/2 inches long when it was killed in 1912 in Indonesia.

 

[Chlidonias]

http://www.zandavisitor.com/newsarticle-4565

The Columbus Zoo and Aquarium has a new reticulated python that has big shoes to fill. Fluffy’s daughter arrived yesterday and can now be seen in the famous snake’s former habitat in the Asia Quest region of the Zoo.

Snakes do not care for their young so this new snake, hatched in 1998, never knew her gentle giant mother. At about 200 pounds and 18-feet in length she has a ways to go to measure up to her predecessor. Fluffy was 300 pounds and 24-feet long and held the title of longest snake by Guinness World Records. Fluffy came to the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in 2007 and died on October 15, 2010 due to an apparent tumor on her ovary. The histopathology on the mass has not been completed.

Columbus Zoo and Aquarium staff members were moved by the outpouring of sympathy and support they received from Fluffy’s fans from the central Ohio community and around the world. When they learned the private breeder who sold Fluffy to the Zoo in 2007 also had her daughter, the decision was made to bring her to the Zoo. She arrived late yesterday.

Within the next few weeks, the Zoo will announce plans for the public to assist with naming the new snake.

Columbus Zoo members can see Fluffy’s daughter during a Wildlights preview event on Thursday, November 18. Wildlights opens to the general public on the evening of Friday, November 19 and continues through January 1, 2011 (excluding Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.)