BRITAIN’S biggest snake needed eight sturdy staff members from Chester Zoo just to take her to a health check-up.
But Bali the 23ft python was never going to be an ordinary patient. The reticulated snake, thought to be one of the biggest in Europe, is so heavy that she required a whole team of zookeepers and vets on stand-by to carry her in for her health check.
Bali, who weighs in at 90kg, received a general health once-over as well as an ultrasound scan as part of a heart check-up, being examined by two cardio experts – Rob Shave and Eric Stohr from Cardiff Metropolitan University.
Other tests were performed on the zoo’s other python, JF, who is a smaller 15ft.
The pythons at Chester Zoo are fed every six to eight weeks on a diet of rodents, small mammals and birds.
They have very sharp teeth which they use to hold their prey, before crushing and suffocating them with their body.
And female reticulated pythons like Bali are capable of laying between 60 and 100 eggs at a time, which take between 70-90 days to hatch.
The snakes are native to southeast Asia, a region in which Chester Zoo is involved in several key conservation projects striving to save animal and plant species from extinction.
