A lurking predator, they catch their prey with dozens of sharp curved teeth and then kill it before swallowing it whole.
It is one of the few species of snake that occasionally preys on humans.
A grandmother was eaten alive after she went out into a rubber plantation to collect rubber sap, locals who went out to search for this missing could not find her.
But they managed to find a python which looks like he had just had a big meal.
After capturing the snake, they opened it up and found the remains of the missing grandmother.
Python strikes again and again
In 2018, a 23-foot python killed and swallowed a woman who had gone to inspect her vegetable garden on the island of Sulawesi in central Indonesia.
As happened in Sumatra, local residents caught the snake, split it open and found its body inside. His sandals, knife and torch were found nearby.
Last year, a 25-year-old man was swallowed whole by a python in Sulawesi. A man named Akbar was harvesting oil palm in his plantation when he was bitten by a snake.
When police searched the area, they found no trace of the farmer, but they did find a large python in a drainage ditch.
“They suspect the snake may have Akbar. When it was opened, Akbar was inside the snake,” said Mashura, a spokesman for the West Sulawesi provincial police.
Local official Salupiro Junaidi said villagers heard screams coming from the oil palm plantation the night before the farmer disappeared. “Residents opened the snake’s stomach and found Akbar was dead,” he said.
Batik pythons are not only dangerous on land. They are excellent swimmers and have colonized many islands within their own territory.
Pythons can swallow prey up to a quarter of their length and up to their own weight.
They are known to attack and eat crocodiles and, in one documented case, a species of sun bear found in Southeast Asia.
Sometimes they take more than they can handle. In 2005, a 13-foot-long Burmese python tried to swallow a 6-foot crocodile in the Florida Everglades, but the snake’s stomach exploded. Both animals died in the encounter.