Django
07-24-03, 05:11 PM
As the release of the fourth Indiana Jones movie draws ever nearer, I guess this is the perfect opportunity to discuss one of the major recurrent themes in the movies--and also in other Spielberg films--namely, snakes and other reptiles.
Indiana Jones reveals how he feels about snakes way back in Raiders of the Lost Ark when he finds a giant python in his aircraft seat as he makes his getaway from a horde of rampaging tribals. It turns out that it is "Reggie," the pilot's pet snake. At this juncture, Indiana Jones emphatically declares his antipathy for the cold-blooded reptiles in no uncertain terms: "I hate snakes! I hate 'em!" he says. I don't suppose he might have added the qualifier, "Nothing personal!" This hatred of snakes could, I guess, be analogized with Indiana Jones' hatred for Nazis, which he declares in Last Crusade: "Nazis . . . I hate those guys!" Spielberg traces this hatred of snakes on the part of the heroic Indiana Jones back to a childhood trauma, when he falls into a pit of snakes in the "House of Reptiles" in the chase sequence at the beginning of Last Crusade, featuring the young Indiana Jones. I suppose this experience left its psychological impact, leading to a deep-seated antipathy for the cold-blooded reptiles in his later years.
Given Indy's subconscious hatred for snakes, one feels for him all the more later in Raiders when he finds himself trapped in an Egyptian tomb in Cairo, surrounded by poisonous Egyptian snakes of every conceivable variety, especially asps, as Indy's sidekick Sallah observes at one point--pretty nasty stuff. This theme of being trapped in some sort of underground mausoleum, surrounded by vermin also recurs in the two other movies--in Temple of Doom, Indy finds himself surrounded by giant insects, while in Last Crusade, it's rats--which turns out to be his father's pet peeve. I wonder what Spielberg and Lucas have dreamed up for Indiana Jones IV--maybe Indy finds himself trapped in a pig farm, attacked by hostile pigs--or maybe he lands up in a livestock show and is attacked by rampaging oxen!
Anyway, getting back to snakes and other cold-blooded reptiles, for me, the most memorable sequence--and the funniest--in the Indiana Jones movies is during the dinner scene in Pankot Palace in Temple of Doom, when one of the items in the menu is "snake surprise"--namely, a giant python stuffed with smaller snakes. Not exactly a speciality of Indian cuisine, quite frankly (which is largely vegetarian), but who cares? It's only Hollywood!
And, of course, Spielberg's obvious dislike of cold-blooded reptiles is apparent in some of his other movies, such as Jurassic Park, The Lost World and The Prince of Egypt.
That brings me to the subject of: what is your personal favorite cold-blooded reptile?
My favorite is the anaconda:
http://www.anacondashp.hpg.com.br/anaconda.jpg
http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk/images/anaconda.gif
http://www.digitalfog.com/gallery/Anaconda.jpg
http://www.junglephotos.com/animals/reptiles/anaconda.JPG
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues96/sep96/images/operat.jpg
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/explorer/051101/images/051101.jpg
The largest-known snake in the world is the Anaconda, or Eunectes murinus, of South America. It holds the world's record for size with one specimen, encountered by petroleum geologist in eastern Columbia in the 1944, measuring 37 1/2 feet in length. Somewhere deep in the southern swamps do they grow bigger? According to Colonel Percy H. Fawcett, a former British Army officer, surveyor and adventurer in the early 1900's, they do:
We were drifting easily along on the sluggish current not far below the confluence of tigor and the Rio Negro when almost under the bow there appeared a triangular head and several feet of undulating body. It was a giant anaconda. I sprang for my rifle as the creature began to make its way up the bank, and hardly waiting to aim smashed a .44 soft-nosed bullet into its spine, ten feet below the wicked head. At once there was a flurry of foam, and several heavy thumps against the boat's keel, shaking us as though we had run on a snag...
Fawcett describes how they stopped and examined the body. Though he had no ruler, he guessed the length of the creature at sixty-two feet with a twelve-inch diameter. "Such large specimens as this may not be common, but the trails in the swamps reach a width of six feet and support the statements of Indians and rubber pickers that the anaconda sometimes reaches an incredible size dwarfing that shot by me. The Brazilian Boundary Commission told me of one exceeding eighty feet in length!"
The anaconda can live in fresh water and could be a candidate for some smaller sea serpent, or lake monster reports. Like all snakes, the anaconda is carnivorous. While some snakes use venom (poison) to kill or paralyze their victims, the anaconda, like its Eastern Hemisphere cousins, pythons (left), kill by constriction. A python, by looping its body around an animal, can use its powerful muscles to squeeze until the animal can no longer breath.
The anaconda lives in Central and tropical South America. It is a member of the Boa family of snakes and is dark green in color with round markings. It is sometimes referred to as the "water boa." Because the anaconda's weight is usually supported by liquid, it can grow larger than snakes that make their homes in trees. The water-based anaconda often winds up drowning its victims as they are pulled into the water rather than suffocating them by constriction.
Snakes swallow their victims whole. Although it is often said a snake's jaw can be unhinged from the skull to allow something much larger than the snake's girth to be swallowed, the jaws are actually connected by a ligament that stretches. Once the carcass is inside the snake it must be digested quickly before it rots in the serpent's gut. If a snake cannot digest his prey before bacteria does, the snake will be forced to regurgitate it. If he cannot spit it out, the snake may die of food poisoning.
The large anacondas feed on deer, pigs, caiman (a creature that looks like a small crocodile), and fish. The snake usually wraps his extended jaws around the head of the victim and swallows working its way down to the victim's feet. This allows the unfortunate animal's limbs to neatly fold inward rather than present an obstacle to ingestion.
Although the anaconda is generally considered the largest snake, some people list a reticulated python (Python reticulated) killed in Celebes, Indonesia in 1912 as the largest single specimen. It was 32 feet 10 inches long. Some people do not accept the 37 1/2 ft. Colombian anaconda because after shooting the snake and measuring it, the expedition went off and ate lunch before attempting to photograph and skin it. While they were gone, the snake, (apparently still alive) crawled or swam away.
Even if you disqualify the Colombian anaconda, another 34 ft. long specimen, shot in British Guiana by Vincent Roth, a reputable scientist, would still be longer than the Celebes python.
The Anaconda is also foot per foot a much bigger snake than the Python, being both heavier and wider in girth. This is probably because the anaconda, a water snake, does not have to be concerned about getting its body up a tree like the python does. For these reasons the museum reports the anaconda as the largest snake, though on the average some Pythons grow longer.
Do large snakes like the python and the anaconda eat people? Occasionally such attacks are recorded in the wild. In 1972 a python in Burma ate an eight-year-old boy. In 1927 there was the story about a jeweler called Maung Chit Chine. He hid under a tree during a rain storm and afterward his friends could only find his hat and shoes. When they killed a nearby gouged Python, they found the rest of Chines' body, swallowed feet first (though this seems opposite to normal snake behavior) and whole, inside the snake.
Strangely enough, many big snakes attack humans not in the jungle, but in suburbia. Pythons are often kept as pets, but can turn deadly without warning. In 1993 in Colorado, a 15-year-old boy weighing 95 pounds was attacked by the family's python. The snake was only of medium size being 11 feet long and weighing 53 pounds, yet was able to kill the boy, though it made no attempt to eat him.
Indiana Jones reveals how he feels about snakes way back in Raiders of the Lost Ark when he finds a giant python in his aircraft seat as he makes his getaway from a horde of rampaging tribals. It turns out that it is "Reggie," the pilot's pet snake. At this juncture, Indiana Jones emphatically declares his antipathy for the cold-blooded reptiles in no uncertain terms: "I hate snakes! I hate 'em!" he says. I don't suppose he might have added the qualifier, "Nothing personal!" This hatred of snakes could, I guess, be analogized with Indiana Jones' hatred for Nazis, which he declares in Last Crusade: "Nazis . . . I hate those guys!" Spielberg traces this hatred of snakes on the part of the heroic Indiana Jones back to a childhood trauma, when he falls into a pit of snakes in the "House of Reptiles" in the chase sequence at the beginning of Last Crusade, featuring the young Indiana Jones. I suppose this experience left its psychological impact, leading to a deep-seated antipathy for the cold-blooded reptiles in his later years.
Given Indy's subconscious hatred for snakes, one feels for him all the more later in Raiders when he finds himself trapped in an Egyptian tomb in Cairo, surrounded by poisonous Egyptian snakes of every conceivable variety, especially asps, as Indy's sidekick Sallah observes at one point--pretty nasty stuff. This theme of being trapped in some sort of underground mausoleum, surrounded by vermin also recurs in the two other movies--in Temple of Doom, Indy finds himself surrounded by giant insects, while in Last Crusade, it's rats--which turns out to be his father's pet peeve. I wonder what Spielberg and Lucas have dreamed up for Indiana Jones IV--maybe Indy finds himself trapped in a pig farm, attacked by hostile pigs--or maybe he lands up in a livestock show and is attacked by rampaging oxen!
Anyway, getting back to snakes and other cold-blooded reptiles, for me, the most memorable sequence--and the funniest--in the Indiana Jones movies is during the dinner scene in Pankot Palace in Temple of Doom, when one of the items in the menu is "snake surprise"--namely, a giant python stuffed with smaller snakes. Not exactly a speciality of Indian cuisine, quite frankly (which is largely vegetarian), but who cares? It's only Hollywood!
And, of course, Spielberg's obvious dislike of cold-blooded reptiles is apparent in some of his other movies, such as Jurassic Park, The Lost World and The Prince of Egypt.
That brings me to the subject of: what is your personal favorite cold-blooded reptile?
My favorite is the anaconda:
http://www.anacondashp.hpg.com.br/anaconda.jpg
http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk/images/anaconda.gif
http://www.digitalfog.com/gallery/Anaconda.jpg
http://www.junglephotos.com/animals/reptiles/anaconda.JPG
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smithsonian/issues96/sep96/images/operat.jpg
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/explorer/051101/images/051101.jpg
The largest-known snake in the world is the Anaconda, or Eunectes murinus, of South America. It holds the world's record for size with one specimen, encountered by petroleum geologist in eastern Columbia in the 1944, measuring 37 1/2 feet in length. Somewhere deep in the southern swamps do they grow bigger? According to Colonel Percy H. Fawcett, a former British Army officer, surveyor and adventurer in the early 1900's, they do:
We were drifting easily along on the sluggish current not far below the confluence of tigor and the Rio Negro when almost under the bow there appeared a triangular head and several feet of undulating body. It was a giant anaconda. I sprang for my rifle as the creature began to make its way up the bank, and hardly waiting to aim smashed a .44 soft-nosed bullet into its spine, ten feet below the wicked head. At once there was a flurry of foam, and several heavy thumps against the boat's keel, shaking us as though we had run on a snag...
Fawcett describes how they stopped and examined the body. Though he had no ruler, he guessed the length of the creature at sixty-two feet with a twelve-inch diameter. "Such large specimens as this may not be common, but the trails in the swamps reach a width of six feet and support the statements of Indians and rubber pickers that the anaconda sometimes reaches an incredible size dwarfing that shot by me. The Brazilian Boundary Commission told me of one exceeding eighty feet in length!"
The anaconda can live in fresh water and could be a candidate for some smaller sea serpent, or lake monster reports. Like all snakes, the anaconda is carnivorous. While some snakes use venom (poison) to kill or paralyze their victims, the anaconda, like its Eastern Hemisphere cousins, pythons (left), kill by constriction. A python, by looping its body around an animal, can use its powerful muscles to squeeze until the animal can no longer breath.
The anaconda lives in Central and tropical South America. It is a member of the Boa family of snakes and is dark green in color with round markings. It is sometimes referred to as the "water boa." Because the anaconda's weight is usually supported by liquid, it can grow larger than snakes that make their homes in trees. The water-based anaconda often winds up drowning its victims as they are pulled into the water rather than suffocating them by constriction.
Snakes swallow their victims whole. Although it is often said a snake's jaw can be unhinged from the skull to allow something much larger than the snake's girth to be swallowed, the jaws are actually connected by a ligament that stretches. Once the carcass is inside the snake it must be digested quickly before it rots in the serpent's gut. If a snake cannot digest his prey before bacteria does, the snake will be forced to regurgitate it. If he cannot spit it out, the snake may die of food poisoning.
The large anacondas feed on deer, pigs, caiman (a creature that looks like a small crocodile), and fish. The snake usually wraps his extended jaws around the head of the victim and swallows working its way down to the victim's feet. This allows the unfortunate animal's limbs to neatly fold inward rather than present an obstacle to ingestion.
Although the anaconda is generally considered the largest snake, some people list a reticulated python (Python reticulated) killed in Celebes, Indonesia in 1912 as the largest single specimen. It was 32 feet 10 inches long. Some people do not accept the 37 1/2 ft. Colombian anaconda because after shooting the snake and measuring it, the expedition went off and ate lunch before attempting to photograph and skin it. While they were gone, the snake, (apparently still alive) crawled or swam away.
Even if you disqualify the Colombian anaconda, another 34 ft. long specimen, shot in British Guiana by Vincent Roth, a reputable scientist, would still be longer than the Celebes python.
The Anaconda is also foot per foot a much bigger snake than the Python, being both heavier and wider in girth. This is probably because the anaconda, a water snake, does not have to be concerned about getting its body up a tree like the python does. For these reasons the museum reports the anaconda as the largest snake, though on the average some Pythons grow longer.
Do large snakes like the python and the anaconda eat people? Occasionally such attacks are recorded in the wild. In 1972 a python in Burma ate an eight-year-old boy. In 1927 there was the story about a jeweler called Maung Chit Chine. He hid under a tree during a rain storm and afterward his friends could only find his hat and shoes. When they killed a nearby gouged Python, they found the rest of Chines' body, swallowed feet first (though this seems opposite to normal snake behavior) and whole, inside the snake.
Strangely enough, many big snakes attack humans not in the jungle, but in suburbia. Pythons are often kept as pets, but can turn deadly without warning. In 1993 in Colorado, a 15-year-old boy weighing 95 pounds was attacked by the family's python. The snake was only of medium size being 11 feet long and weighing 53 pounds, yet was able to kill the boy, though it made no attempt to eat him.