In a startling encounter near Balediha village in Jharkhand’s Giridih district, a massive python was caught in the act of swallowing a fox. The incident took place on Wednesday in a forest area under the Sariya police station limits.
Locals who had ventured into the forest for grazing cattle stumbled upon the python mid-hunt, as reported by NDTV. As the snake began devouring its prey, alarmed villagers raised a commotion, drawing a crowd. A video of the incident, which has now gone viral, was posted by Brut India on Instagram, showing the python with the fox already halfway down its throat. Several people at the scene whipped out their phones to record the eerie sight.
According to the post’s caption, pythons have surprisingly slow eating habits depending on their size: “Young pythons eat every 5–10 days, sub-adults every 10–14 days or once in 3–4 weeks, large adults as rarely as once every one to two months, depending on the size of the prey,” it said.
National Geographic explains how these snakes manage to eat animals far bigger than their head. Thanks to flexible ligaments and independently moving skull bones, a python’s jaws can open wide enough to “walk” prey into its throat.
The video triggered a wave of reactions online. “Let it eat in peace,” one user commented. “This sort of attention would surely have made the python nervous, thus regurgitating its food!”
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Others turned to humour. One said, “Python eating frontend and backend,” while another wrote, “This is the correct representation of cameraman capturing you eat in wedding.” One user captured the struggle of students everywhere: “Me trying to cover the entire syllabus one day before.”
This isn’t the first time such an incident has made headlines. In 2024, a 16-foot-long python swallowed a calf near Parana village in Uttar Pradesh’s Agra. The snake was found by shepherds with most of the calf already lodged inside its body.
Several people at the scene whipped out their phones to record the eerie sight 
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