In the wild heart of Venezuela,
earth and water merge to create a landscape like no other
one that has bred many a legendary appetite.
But for the early explorers who ventured into this savage place,
no creature loomed larger or more terrifying
than South America's giant serpent.
Trophy hunters spun tales of 100-foot monsters, intent on human flesh
and for centuries this astonishing creature has been obscured by legends
as tangled and dense as the swamps it inhabits.
But now a barefoot biologist is taking on the anaconda.
His mission: To snatch its secrets from the murk of myth and terror,
giving us our first glimpse
into the hidden life of the largest snake on earth.
Big snake. Big snake.
In the first scarlet rays of morning
a primeval world awakens.
Birds by the tens of thousands respond to the siren call of the llanos
flooded savannas that cover one-third of Venezuela.
Months of drenching rains have waterlogged these plains,
creating a soggy Serengeti as vast and pristine as its African counterpart.
But the dry season has begun,
and herds of capybaras now begin to follow the receding water.
These giant rodents the world's largest can weigh up to 140 pounds.
Soon this lush place will be a parched plain...
so the creatures of the llanos eat while the eating is good.
But their idyll of peace and plenty is about to be interrupted.
Curled in the water hyacinth is 13 feet of starving serpent:
A giant female anaconda.
She has not eaten for months...
and has her lidless eyes on a suitably giant meal.
Oblivious to her presence,
the capybara family plays.
Dull eyed but sharp tongued,
the snake tastes the air for the scent of her rodent prey.
The season lends urgency to her hunger
It's time for her to mate
and only well-fed snakes breed successfully.
Once pregnant she won't eat again until after
the babies are born seven months later So she'd better eat well now.
At her strike, the llanos takes flight
But for one capybara, it's too late.
Anacondas kill with power, not poison.
Locked in the snake's deadly coils,
the capybara is being squeezed so tight it cannot breathe...
so tight, in fact, that it's blood can't circulate.
Her elastic jaws stretched impossibly wide,
she now begins the ponderous business of swallowing her victim head first.
She has paid a price for this meal
She bears the bite marks of the capybara's final struggle.
There may be other snakes in the world that are as long as the anaconda,
but none can match it for sheer bulk.
Her body was a foot thick before she ate the capybara.
Six hours later, the last of the rodent has disappeared into the snake.
Her post-meal proportions are chilling to the human eye.
She's actually quite vulnerable now.
But fortunately for her,
the only creature audacious enough to tangle
with a full-grown female anaconda
is on the trail of another snake.
Slogging through the hyacinth is biologist Jesus Rivas.
Since 1992,
he's headed up the very first attempt to study anacondas in the wild
a study funded in part by National Geographic.
Before the study began,
scientists knew virtually nothing about the biology
of this shy and dangerous creature.
Okay, you want me to hold...
Wildlife biologist Renee Owens joined Jesus in his slippery pursuit in 1996.
The husband and wife team have caught
and catalogued almost 800 of these giant snakes.
Many are given names:
This one they call Godzilla.
Are you losing your grip?
In a second I will.
Oh, you won't. Hold it tight.
This is an animal that is the absolute master of the swamp,
the custom-made animal for this place.
Catch and kill animals much stronger and much tougher than people.
Oh, it's a big mama.
Come here and get a better grip.
Come here.
To work on a dangerous animal like this...
potentially, at least, very dangerous,
you have to have complete trust in each other or you just can't do it,
because you can't go in and be worrying about...
what could go wrong and how you could be hurt.
Godzilla.
We are having a ball, aren't we?
What I want to do is to get to know what the anaconda is all about...
we're going to study where they live,
what they eat, when they breed,
what temperature they prefer,
what vegetation they like...
to put on the snake shoes and wear them.
Wait, wait, wait.
Jesus and Renee want to observe the females during breeding.
To do so, they must get radio transmitters into as many snakes
as possible in the next few weeks.
The force feeding may look brutal but it's little more than an
annoyance to a snake large enough to swallow a small person.
I need you to hold the head now, Renee.
Below my hands.
Wait, wait. Okay, got her.
Ah, don't worry.
Oh, you want to kiss me, don't you?
I'm not your lover.
I'm trying to keep the female from getting away.
And I have to do that any way I can.
They're slippery, there's no traction,
there's nothing to grab onto...
I'll pretty much kneel on the body of the female...
I think it went down far enough cause it's the only way
I have to keep her in one place.
It is thrilling and dangerous work.
But perhaps this female will lead them to the heart of a great mystery
the remarkable love life of the anaconda.
Godzilla.
Jesus's living laboratory is an enormous patchwork of llanos,
thanks to three Venezuelan cattle ranches that
play host to the anaconda study.
With so much ground to cover the best way for Jesus to keep tabs
on his radio-tagged snakes is from the air.
Conspicuous in the hyacinth below is the giant female that ate the capybara
a snake Jesus has named Diega.
Warmth from the sun speeds up Diega's digestive process...
bloating her with gasses and keeping her afloat.
Jesus will keep an eye on her
and return to collect her when she's gotten back her girlish figure.
With the serpent sleeping off her meal,
this part of Eden seems impossibly idyllic.
But not all of the capybara's companions in the llanos
are as harmless as the snowy egret.
For this is the land of the caiman,
South America's infamous alligator cousin.
For a reptile of this size,
there is no more sumptuous meal than the giant rodent.
The scent of blood in the water draws a crowd
of fearsome scavengers from below
Red piranha gather hoping for leftovers.
But today the hungry caiman will disappoint.
He's not about to let even a careless mouthful escape his jaws.
Twice a day now the anaconda patrol makes the rounds,
with spotters on the roof Renee behind the wheel, and her dog, Chukka
an apprentice snake hunter himself riding shotgun.
It's been a red-letter day
four snakes already captured and one to go.
They've come for Diega
who's been digesting her capybara supper for more than two weeks.
Jesus prefers to do his snake-hunting barefoot
it's the best way to feel the slippery skin of an anaconda
under the hyacinth.
But in waters that contain piranha, stingrays,
electric eels and caiman, he's taking a considerable risk.
When anaconda-hunting,
there's safety in numbers and colleague John Thorbjarnarson
sometimes joins in.
When you go out, never by yourself because these animals are big
and they are predators and you are potential prey.
Two of my assistants have been attacked by anaconda.
Chukka, look, snake, Chukka.
A protesting Diega is removed from her refuge.
Fortunately, she's still sluggish from her meal
and would rather escape than attack.
Wow!
It's beautiful.
Look at those colors.
Diega is not nearly as taken with Jesus as he is with her.
Renee puts an old sock over the snake's massive head
to keep the teeth at bay.
Stay!
Be good.
This is like mud wrestling.
Previous catches of the day are getting restless in the truck.
It's time to steer a course for home.
With their home doubling as their laboratory,
living with snakes has become a way of life for Renee and Jesus.
I think we can do the female first.
It's eight hundred and forty-three, right?
8-4-3.
Once inside, they begin processing the snakes.
What number is this?
Eight hundred and what?
Jesus marks each snake with a number.
Renee sketches their tail markings the anaconda version of a fingerprint.
It's easier than wrestling snakes in the wild,
but it has its drawbacks too.
Living with snakes basically is that it stinks.
Literally, it just smells really bad.
They have this musk that smells if you're not really an expert
it smells just like an animal that's been rotting for about five days.
And there are times when we have in the house anywhere
from three to 20 to 25 bags of snakes sitting around the house
with four drums full of big snakes, so basically, yeah, it stinks.
Diega measures about 13 feet long a giant snake,
but by no means the largest.
No one knows how long an anaconda can get.
The 150-foot monsters described in Brazilian news accounts
are biologically impossible.
Even the largest trophy skins don't approach that.
But Jesus's most conservative estimate still boggles the mind.
This is an animal that can grow real close to 30 feet.
The weight of an animal of that kind is something like 1,200 pounds.
We're talking about more than a boar more than a normal cow.
Now catalogued and fitted with a transmitter,
Diega is returned to the llanos.
Guess about here. Alright.
Renee and Jesus bid her a temporary farewell,
hoping that she will successfully mate.
We'll keep in touch.
Yup, we'll be back.
You bet we'll keep in touch.
As the dry season progresses the heat intensifies
and wildlife traffic jams worsen in the remaining waterways.
Capybara herds are forced to congregate in shrinking pools.
And tempers run short among dominant males with harems to guard.
At the water's edge a newborn gets a maternal once-over.
But the mother is still in labor there are more on the way.
The impending birth has attracted vultures.
But they'll play an unexpected role here.
Unlikely midwives, they strip the newborn of its protein-rich placenta,
and squabble over it leaving the baby free
to take its first labored breaths.
The newborns could use a few minutes to get their bearings,
but the llanos offers no grace periods.
They've been noticed by a dominant male nearby.
And his interest may not be benign.
This newborn may be the offspring of the dominant male
or that of an upstart rival.
Scientists have yet to determine what force now drives him to act.
In a rarely seen display of violence
he passes sentence on the newborns and appoints himself executioner.
No death goes unnoticed on the llanos.
Spectacled caiman bide their time.
Instantly, the vultures shed their midwife ways for a more familiar role.
Then the caimans lurch ashore for their share.
An underwater cleanup crew will get the rest.
Piranhas, drawn as always to a scene of carnage,
work their grisly magic.
Minutes later, all that remains of the young capybara are the bones.
In a place where some lifetimes are measured in minutes,
a lucky survivor clings to its mother.
He may have no more to fear from his own kind.
But the capybara's enemies on the llanos are many.
It's late afternoon in the Venezuelan savanna.
Everywhere, anacondas are on the move,
taking advantage of cooler temperatures to keep up with the receding waters.
Jesus and Renee savor these last few weeks in the llanos.
Soon the rains will come, making fieldwork virtually impossible.
Work in the llanos is really a unique experience.
You can see the shape of the earth like an ocean of savannah around you.
You have the feeling that those animals that are out there
were there before Columbus arrived to America.
I feel like this is where I belong.
Skimmers grab a last meal as dusk descends.
The evening slant of light signals rush hour in the llanos,
as the birds head home to roost,
further darkening the sky with their numbers.
On a riverbank a jaguar finds his last minutes
of daytime rest plagued by flies.
The big cat needs to rouse himself soon and find a meal.
Morning finds a massive female anaconda
looking for an escape from the rising sun.
The drying river bed exposes muddy crevices among the roots
cool, damp caves
where a snake might wait out the last weeks of the dry season.
But the best laid plans of anacondas are no match for Jesus
and his uncanny knack for uncovering snake haunts.
This is the domain of an anaconda named Marion...
an old friend with a notoriously bad temper.
I think there's a snake here, guys.
Yup, a big one, too.
Big, like Marion big?
Probably, Marion, big, yeah.
If it's Marion, she'll come straight for me.
She hates me.
Uh oh, she's Marion.
She already snapped at the pole.
She snapped at the pole already.
Renee will never forget her introduction to Marion.
Yeah, when Marion bit me it was kind of a surprise,
because I'd seen Jesus get bit by snakes all the time.
He might not admit that, but he gets bit a lot.
It goes with the territory.
I thought Well, it can't hurt that much,
because it happens all the time. He doesn't say much.
And she bit me, and yeah it hurt like hell.
That's a huge head just full of muscle it's just pure muscle.
And she got the smallest part of my body,
and yeah, there's no denying it. It hurts a lot.
Alright
Big snake, big snake.
Marion has always made her contributions to science reluctantly.
Jesus is convinced she remembers each capture...
and gets more dangerous with each encounter.
Alright.
Alright. It's her.
Marion is quite capable of killing a human being.
If I let her wrap around me, I'm history.
I'm gone. I'd need at least two more,
three more people to unwrap her because once she makes the loop,
she is absolutely impossible to undo.
You can't just stick your hands between the loops and loosen her up.
It's much too tight.
So even if I have people helping me they need to know what they're doing,
because otherwise it's very hard to it's a very strong animal.
And also the teeth are shaped like needles pushing backwards.
First the mouth holds and then if the animal gets
to make a loop around the prey,
it doesn't matter what kind of prey it is, it's dead.
Anacondas can and do take prey the size of humans,
and many a person's disappearance on the llanos
has been blamed on the giant snakes.
Though no human deaths have been confirmed,
members of the anaconda team have been stalked and attacked.
So, yeah, having been bitten sometimes
yet doing the right thing
I've managed to have all my fingers and toes so far.
Over the years
Jesus has recaptured some of his snakes several times.
He's come to like and respect them as individuals,
but understands that the feelings aren't mutual.
Each time I catch them each time I find them,
I learn something new about them.
And I get attached to them.
I get to understand even their personalities,
makes me really happy when we find an old friend.
But I don't think they're quite as happy to see me as I am to see them.
No, let go, let go. Give me room.
Trying to defend herself
this old friend has sunk her fangs into Jesus' hand.
Okay, open the mouth now.
Ready?
Yeah.
Alright, push your finger forward if you can.
Because her teeth curve backwards,
he must fight off the instinct to pull away,
which would only do more damage.
Instead, he must push his hand deeper into her mouth
to free his skewered finger.
Alright, back a little bit.
No, it's caught...
Yeah...
Need a stick.
Alright...
A stick, yeah.
Long on power and short
on stamina the anaconda relents after a few minutes.
It's loosening up now.
Okay, okay. We got it, we got it.
Okay.
After six years of snake encounters
Jesus still marvels at the range of temperaments
among his favorite creatures.
Anaconda have a very interesting personality.
Some animals are normally oblivious
and we have caught them several times
and we know they are tame animals.
Some of them are absolute bitches.
They're really... they get to be really mean.
As the heat of the dry season continues to intensify,
the reptilian residents of the llanos bask along disappearing streams.
Capybaras hunker down in what water remains.
For the yellow-headed caracara
the capybaras are an obliging, moveable feast of ticks.
The floodplain that lured many piranhas away from their home rivers
is now evaporating rapidly trapping many.
Stranded and suffocating the once fear some killer is helpless.
No one knows exactly why caimans gape
but they might as well be grinning in anticipation.
The crocodilians move in and put an end to the piranha's suffering.
But when the rains come again,
the carnivorous fish will have their day.
It's now late May
six months since the Venezuelan savanna has seen a drop of rain.
But a season of calamity for fish is a season of plenty for birds.
Dozens deep at the water's edge birds wait their turn at the buffet.
Each species has perfected its own feeding technique.
Little distracts the voracious birds from the feast,
but an uninvited guest is about to get their attention.
It's Diega, in search of a nice quiet shallow for mating.
Her arrival seems to elicit more curiosity than fear,
despite the fact that anacondas regularly eat birds.
It's almost as if they know that the snake is an ambush hunter...
and won't waste her energy striking at prey that can see her coming.
Indignant orinoco geese announce
that this is no place for an amorous anaconda.
And the stilts escort her off the property.
Diega retreats, but with an anaconda's characteristic lack of haste...
leaving this place to the birds.
Eventually, Diega finds a suitable place to await her gentlemen callers.
It's likely that the female anaconda sends out
come hither chemicals, or pheromones,
so that the males can locate her using their tongues
as sexual divining rods.
Male anacondas are much smaller than the females.
But with these giant snakes small is a relative term.
He arrives to find the mating party in full swing, but he's undeterred.
Several males have already wrapped themselves around Diega.
It may look like her dance card is full,
but sometimes a female will accommodate up to a dozen males in a breeding ball
a phenomenon Jesus is now trying to understand.
Breeding balls are made of one female and several males
and the question is whether one male gets to mate or several of them do it.
Is it the largest male?
Is it the smallest?
Is it the one that gets their first?
Is it the one that tickles her better?
The "tickling" is done with the male's mating spur,
the last vestige of his lizard ancestor's hind leg.
After mating, the male leaves a sperm plug in the female,
but Jesus believes rival males may be able to squeeze it out of her.
The key question
whether females are impregnated by one male or many
can only be answered if the snakes breed successfully.
Following her radio signals,
Jesus and Renee are thrilled to find Diega has become the belle of the ball.
What comes next will test their snake-handling skills to the limit.
Not only is gathering information of snakes not easy,
but it is basically a race against time.
Once the dry season hits we're out there every day
trying to find as many snakes as we can process.
Once we find breeding balls it's not like catching one snake.
Suddenly you have three four up to 12 snakes
to deal with at one catch.
So, that's a lot of work to do.
Back at the ranch, it's the males' turn to do their bit for science.
Jesus takes blood samples for DNA testing.
Eventually, he'll compare their DNA to that of the offspring
to find out who fathered whom
that is, if all goes well, and Diega has babies in the fall.
But that's far from certain.
She hasn't given birth in the four years Jesus has followed her.
And she's up against the worst dry season in years.
There's no telling when the rains will arrive.
The inland sea has become a mere patchwork of puddles.
Heat and crowding are already taking a toll on the capybaras.
The caracaran once a welcome parasite remover, has become a torment
the weakened capybara has little energy to fight off.
The bird feeds with impunity on the rodent's wounds,
which were inflicted by rivals.
Nearby, an opportunistic predator lurks.
Known as the cougar or mountain lion farther north in the Americas,
the puma finds easy and abundant prey on the llanos.
These are especially hard times for Diega.
Now pregnant she must choose her waterholes well.
Some will disappear altogether in the deepening dry.
And she won't survive for long if she is exposed on the parching surface.
Just seven degrees north of the equator,
with the summer solstice approaching the llanos evaporates.
Scarlet ibises keep a close eye on their sometime nemesis.
In waterholes turned sucking mud,
capybaras wallow and catfish struggle to breathe.
With her water supply running dangerously low,
Diega must now make an excruciating pilgrimage
through the muck in search of shelter.
But the conditions only worsen,
and the next day finds Diega in the shelterof last resort
under the baking mud itself.
Here she will wait for the rains... which show no sign of arriving soon.
Some pregnant females lie exposed on the surface,
where temperatures can reach a deadly 130 degrees.
Many will not make it till the rains come,
and their broods will die with them
a fate shared by many on the scorched llanos.
On the parched plains of Venezuela,
the horizon rumbles with the promise of rain.
The scientists have left the flooded llanos to the capybaras,
not yet knowing if Diega or their other pregnant anacondas survived.
Not until the rains begin to let up
can a worried Jesus take to the air in search of his snakes.
When I go to find Diega after the dry season,
I wonder if she had made it.
This dry season was so hard and so hot
that there was a good chance she dried out.
But Diega has made it, surviving both the drought and her seven-month fast.
She's claimed a bit of high ground to await the birth of her babies...
only then will she eat again.
There will be other reptile births this season as well.
All around, young caimans make their debut on the llanos.
The baby crocodilians emerge from their eggs
snub nosed and chirping.
Almost immediately, they set forth under the watchful eye of their mother.
They are exposed and vulnerable on land,
and waste no time making for the relative safety of the water.
There, they congregate where their mother can keep an eye on them.
Within hours of their birth,
they're pouncing after their first insect meals.
By night, Diega prepares to usher her own family into the world.
Unlike the caiman and most other reptiles,
she gives birth to live young.
Diega has about 40 babies
representing about a third of her body weight.
She also expels a dozen orange spheres eggs that never developed.
The starving mother eats some of her eggs.
These will help sustain her until she's ready to hunt again.
She'll also eat stillborns
hastily backing off if she gnaws a live one by mistake.
Anacondas do not care for their young.
Diega's babies are now on their own.
Within minutes, the first of the newborns moves off,
ready to take its chances in the llanos.
Perhaps half of Diega's offspring will survive.
Even as the neighboring rainforests disappear,
the anaconda continues to thrive in these flooded lowlands.
This morning, the caimans find a free breakfast on the riverbanks
Diega's remaining stillborns which are greedily snapped up.
Some of her living offspring lie low in the hyacinth
doing their best not to attract unwanted attention.
It's time this newborn snake went in search of its first meal.
In fact, a baby caiman might do nicely
But to hunt is to risk becoming the hunted.
Usually, stealth and camouflage render the anaconda invisible to the piranha.
Like a root adrift in a current,
the baby makes its way through the hyacinth.
On rare occasions, though,
an inexperienced youngster blunders into more open waters.
Another baby grabs this opportunity to beat a hasty retreat.
But the llanos has not begun to exhaust its supply of unpleasant surprises.
Like most cats the ocelot's not a big fan of water.
But he'll suffer a dunking in the interests of an anaconda lunch.
Long before they're full-grown
Diega's brood will be decimated.
Those babies have a tough life in front.
They have a lot of predators.
As much as the big ones have almost no predators,
it is completely the opposite in babies.
Nearly every animal can take them.
While Jesus gets acquainted with this year's crop of anacondas,
they get their first taste of him.
With each new generation,
Jesus is one step closer to understanding
the mysteries of anaconda reproduction.
Like their parents
these babies will be numbered, catalogued, and DNA tested.
Then he will return them to the llanos
with a mixture of trepidation and envy
When I let them go I'm jealous I cannot glide
so graceful in the swamp as they do and then spend their life there.
And I have this sense of, you know,
the kids go to college that all the parents have.
They're out on their own and I hope they do well.
Though science is beginning to lift the veil
of terror that surrounds the anaconda,
many of the giant snake's greatest secrets remain unknown.
In the continuing search for answers,
Jesus and Renee will have to probe deeper into the recesses
of South America's jungles,
and there's just no telling what they'll find.
I have no doubt that the giant of giants of anacondas is out there.
Whether we'll find it is a whole other question.
I've thought a lot about what to do if we find this animal that is
too big for me to catch but is too big for me to let go.
I don't know what I will do.
It will be some tough fight.
And I don't know who's gonna win.