Why It Sucks to Be Born as a Burmese Python

You crack through your eggshell into the steamy, suffocating heat of the Southeast Asian rainforest. You and your 26 siblings scramble in all directions for safety. You look over your shoulder in hopes that mom is following close behind, but she's nowhere to be seen.

She's decided taking care of 26 noodle babies is beyond her parental responsibilities. Ain't nobody got time for that. There goes your little sister.

At nearly 2 ft long, you're basically a shoelace with a death wish. King cobras actively hunt you. Leopards watch you through the trees like spotted assassins.

And there might be a crocodile lurking in every waterway you enter. Your first mission, don't become someone's takeout order. And right on quue, rustling in the leaves, you hear it before you see it.

Something is closing in. You instinctively freeze, letting your tan and brown pattern blend into the forest floor. Maybe that was a leopard.

Maybe it wasn't. Either way, your camouflage just saved your tiny noodles shaped behind, and it won't be the last time. Your first week is spent hiding under rotting logs and dense underbrush.

For now, the shest way of staying alive is staying hidden. You learned this the hard way by watching your older brother try to cross a small clearing in the forest. Unfortunately, you're starting to starve, and hiding isn't getting you fed.

It's time for your first hunt. You catch a scent, something small and warm. A tree shrew, the perfect starter meal.

Your body, as still as a statue as it approaches, and then your needle-like teeth sink in, and you wrap your coils around it before it can even squeal. You're not a venomous snake, but you squeeze the air out of your prey faster than a deflating balloon. Your first kill.

Sure, it's no water buffalo, but hey, everyone's got to start somewhere. Your first year, you double in size, but so does the list of things trying to eat you. Your menu upgrades from toads to small birds and rodents.

With each meal, you're getting a little stronger, longer, and wiser. On one particular sunny morning, you're sunning yourself on a log when you sense a presence, that distinctive flicker in the air, another snake. But not just any snake.

The raised hood and posture can only mean one thing, the king cobra. These snake eaters consider pythons like you to be a gourmet meal. This one stretches at least 12 feet long, and unlike you, it wields a venomous bite potent enough to kill a human in under an hour.

You slither backward, slow, silent, praying that today isn't your last. The cobra flicks its tongue, reading the air like a horror movie villain who already knows you're in the house. And then, just when you think you're about to be snake sushi, a monkey screeches from above.

The cobra jerks its head up, momentarily distracted. You're not sticking around, though. You're gone before it remembers you exist.

You decide to evade to the one place you actually thrive in the rainforest. Water. Turns out you're a natural-born swimmer.

The rivers and swamps are your second home. You slice through the water with surprising grace for something with no fins or gills, and you can hold your breath for 30 minutes. You spot a monitor lizard on the riverbank.

It's oblivious that as it hunts for bugs, you're hunting it. And this isn't just another meal for you. This is personal.

Remember when that monitor lizard gobbled up your little sister the day you both hatched? Yeah, time for some revenge. As a python, you have a unique relationship with predators and prey.

As you grow older, the very creatures that used to hunt you when you were tiny become your prey. You slide silently through the murky water, sinking beneath the surface with just your nostrils breaking the waterline. Your muscles coil and you strike.

It's over before it began, and revenge has never tasted so sweet. The victory tour doesn't last long, though. There's always a bigger fish.

That log next to you explodes into motion. Death log with teeth. The crocodile lunges with shocking speed, jaws snapping just inches from your tail.

You thrash, twist, and just barely slip away, leaving behind a few scales and 100% of your dignity. Mental note, always check for logs with teeth before swimming. Bruised and exhausted, you slink off to a quiet corner of the forest to recuperate.

Fast forward and you're 5 years old now. Congratulations, you're one of the lucky few who have made it to adulthood. In the Southeast Asian rainforest, the rules are simple.

Survive or get eaten. But now you've outgrown the get eaten part. At over 15 ft long, you're no one's easy meal.

Even leopards, the same ones that once had you trembling, now give you the right away on the forest floor. Only the biggest crocodile, still think you'd make a decent snack. But even they hesitate.

The tables have turned and you're the apex predator now. You're an ambush predator, which is a fancy way of saying your life is 90% sitting around waiting for food. Hours, days, weeks, sometimes perfectly still, watching the same spot, waiting for something edible to wander by.

And then finally, movement. A piglet sniffing the air, unaware that it just walked into the worst mistake of its short life. You explode from your hiding spot, jaws wide.

What happens next? Well, it's quite the production. Your jaw unhinges like a possessed PEZ dispenser, allowing you to swallow prey hole, which are several times wider than your own head.

Your hundreds of backwards facing teeth ensure that once something goes down your gullet, it's not coming back up. And then comes digestion. For weeks, you're just a bloated meat tube, hoping no one notices you're currently experiencing the world's most intense food coma.

Your stomach acids are so powerful, they can dissolve bones, hooves, and teeth. It's efficient, but it also means you spend about a quarter of your life lying around slowly melting your last meal. This is when you're most vulnerable, and that's exactly when disaster strikes.

You're digesting your biggest meal yet, a wild boar, when an owl's hoot coming from overhead alerts you to movement nearby. A flash of golden black moves between the trees. A leopard.

Even at your size, these bone crushing jungle cats are bad news. In a desperate move, you projectile launch your half-digested boar. It's gross.

It's humiliating, but it works. The leopard, intrigued by the disgusting free buffet, turns its attention away from you. You escape at the cost of a week's worth of calories.

But food's not the only thing on your mind. Finding love in a cold-blooded world also has its challenges. When mating season hits, your body starts pumping out pherommones like a teenager who just discovered Axe body spray.

Suddenly, every fiber of your being is focused on one mission. Find a female. You pick up a promising scent trail, slither toward your prize, and h seriously, another male is already here, sniffing the same path.

There's only one way to settle this. A full body slow motion wrestling match. You coil, you shove, you rise up like two scaly sumo wrestlers, each trying to overpower the other.

It's a 2-hour battle of strength and stamina. Winner gets the girl, loser slithers away to find another scent trail. Dating is tough when you don't have Tinder.

Finally, you win. The other male slinks away in defeat, and you follow the scent to the prize. There she is, coiled in the shade of a banyan tree.

She's massive, about five feet longer than you, and thick. In the python dating world, that's both terrifying and kind of hot. She watches you with a cold, calculating gaze, like someone deciding whether you're worth their time.

You inch closer, cautiously. No sudden moves. She doesn't slither away.

That's a good sign. Then, with a slow, deliberate flick of her tongue, she accepts you. Mating begins and for a brief moment you feel like the luckiest snake alive.

You align yourself alongside her and within 20 minutes the deed is done. But the love in the air disperses quickly. As soon as it's over, she vanishes into the brush of the rainforest, leaving you wondering if she ever really cared about you.

Spoiler alert, she didn't. For her, the hard work is just beginning. Now turned into a bonafide egg factory, she pours every ounce of energy into growing her 30 python eggs over the next 2 months.

When the moment finally arrives, she picks the perfect spot. An abandoned underground burrow once used by a Malayan porcupine. Hidden away and safe, she lays her eggs and coils around them, shivering to keep them warm.

For another 2 months, she stands guard over her incubating clutch. Then, when the eggs begin to hatch, tiny pythons exit the nest in search of food and shelter. And just like that, her job is done.

All right, that's enough baby talk. Now, let's get back to you. Fast forward a few more years, and congratulations, you've reached your golden years.

You're 15 years old now and your old age is starting to show. You used to be a coiled up death machine. Now you're a long cranky noodle with back pain and every meal is starting to feel like the last supper.

You're basking peacefully when you feel the vibrations of an approaching intruder. A younger python, sleek, strong, and still full of reckless ambition. It slithers into your territory.

You give him a warning by flicking your tongue. Back off, kid. I built this empire.

But he doesn't care. He wants your prime hunting grounds. And worse, he's fast.

Faster than you remember being. He lunges first, coiling around you in a brutal squeeze. You fight back because what else can you do?

But your old muscles scream in protest. For the first time, you feel it. Your grip just isn't what it used to be.

The kid wins. You slither away, defeated, leaving behind the hunting grounds you fought so hard for all those years ago. You tell yourself, "It's fine.

Less territory means less to defend. " But deep down, you know you're slipping. Days pass.

You're hungrier than you've ever been, desperate, and desperation makes you stupid. You set your sights on a wild boar, bigger than your usual prey. But hey, you used to handle these things, right?

You slither into position, muscles tensing. But just as you strike, the boar turns. It sees you, and instead of running, it charges.

Oh. Oh no. You try to dodge, but your sluggish reflexes fail you.

The impact is like getting hit by a truck made of rage and tusks. You're left wheezing in the dirt, bruised, bleeding, and suddenly thinking that maybe being a vegetarian wouldn't be so bad after all. Injured and starving, you drag yourself toward the river, hoping to rest.

The cool water glistens in the sun, offering welcome relief. But there's a shift in the shallows, a shape. You freeze.

You've seen this log before. You've crossed paths with him for years, always just out of reach. But today, today, he's close enough.

As the water turns red around you and your consciousness fades away, you see your entire life flash before your eyes. And in your last moment, you can't help but think to yourself, "Man, it sure does suck to be born as a python.