Disturbing footage has emerged of a massive snake dangling a dead possum from the wooden rafters of a roof.
The footage taken on the Gold Coast shows a coastal carpet python stretching from the roof and almost reaching the floor while grabbing onto the dead brushtail possum.
The snake can be seen gripping the possum by the head with its up to 100 teeth, a ‘kiss of death’, and coiling itself up to pull it into the rafters rafters.
Although the possum would be enough to keep the snake full for about a month, it decided to leave its kill behind after it dropped it on the ground.
The eating process usually includes striking, constricting and eating their prey and if disrupted can lead to them being put off from following through with the kill.
Disturbing footage has shown the moment a coastal carpet python has attempted to pull a brushtail possum into a rafter with a bite to the head (pictured)
Only mature pythons – which can grow up to 3m-long – are known to attack possums as they require more strength to kill than smaller pythons diets of bats and lizards.
Sunshine Coast snake catcher Daniel Busstra believes the possum had most likely been sleeping on one of the wooden beams in the rafters when the python caught its scent and hunted it down.
‘(It would have) gone up to the rafters, (struck) at it, wrapped it up and strangled it, and then while it was strangling it, it would have lost its balance,’ he told news.com.au.
After losing its balance and grabbing onto the rafters with just the tip of its tail, the snake would have had little strength to pull its kill up and chose to instead leave it behind.
Pythons of similar size have been seen easily puling up possums to higher areas if they have a better anchor to hold onto.
One python was spotted in Mooloolaba by snake catcher Stuart McKenzie engorging on a possum while hanging from a roof’s gutter in 2020.
Mr McKenzie said the snake took about an hour to digest the possum ‘whilst hanging upside down’.
The snake most likely left behind the kill after not having the strength to pull the possum up all the way, dropping it and disrupting it’s eating habit
Witnessing a python kill a possum is considered relatively rare as both animals are nocturnal feeders and usually interact in the dead of night.
While the footage may be confronting to some, Mr Busstra said it was a natural consequence of a ‘healthy ecosystem’.
‘The snake’s gotta eat and they all work with each other in a sense. As much as people don’t like to see it, it’s gotta happen,’ he said.
While dangerous to medium-sized mammas, birds and lizards, the pythons don’t pose a threat to humans unless provoked.