Titanoboa

So I saw the movie last night.

I had such a great time because to me, horror is at its peak when it like, it's both frightening and like it can marry visceral thrills of like a big snake monster with a larger social commentary.

And I think that this does such a great job of meeting those two things because there's such a strong environmental message in this film.

Like the destruction of the Amazon is not just like a background to it, but it's kind of like intrinsic to the reason for why the horror exists.

Like as soon as I started to really dive into like what was going on down there, I was like, Oh my God, like there are these, these tribes, these groups, these indigenous that like these indigenous people who are literally fighting gold miners and like trying to like get them out and This is insane.

The stakes are already so high.

Um, and then you throw a giant snake in the mix, you know what I mean? And you make it, you know, a part of that, that story.

Um, and that, you know, and then you, you beg the question, like, is this a creature that's, they're just fighting to survive or is there something else about it? And I love that blend of mystery.

It's based in folklore and it's based in reality.

So the snake itself was actually inspired by the Titanoboa, you know, that was around 50 million years ago, just after the dinosaurs.

It was kind of like the biggest apex predator on the planet at that time.

And it lived in the Amazon.

They did an amazing job.

We just dove into the research.

We learned a lot about Titanoboa, which is the giant snake from 50 million years ago that is very inspired by this, which was inspiring to the story and to the creature.

And we looked at snakes that are around now, like anacondas, boas, and pythons, and just sort of tried to imagine what, after 50 million years, you know, if a snake that big was to still exist, how might have it like adapted or changed or evolved into what it is now? And so it was a lot of like combining those elements and then also using our own creativity to like say like, well, Is there also something that we can bring with the folklore to it? Is there a bit of magic to this creature? Is there a bit of wisdom that this creature has, knowing that it's been around for this long, knowing that there's stories about it that have been passed down for ages? And so all those things came together, and that's kind of how we came up with our girl.

Or they have strategies to grow faster after a fire.

This is the Titanoboa.

One of the largest and most deadly snakes that ever existed.

It died 55 million years ago.

But what if that never happened? What if the Titanoboa still lived today? What special features would this snake have? And how big could it be? This is WHAT WOULD BE IF, and this is what it would look like if the Titanoboa never stopped developing.

Okay, before we look at today's Titanoboa, we have to go back.

60 million years ago, the Titanoboa lived in the tropical waters of South America and appeared after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

It was an important robber of its time.

It's not going to matter as long as the...

It's like if she has that, now technically Titanoboa had the constriction power of if you were being crushed by the Brooklyn Bridge.

So if we put a T-800 in a press, that did some damage.

Right, for sure.

I'm a little tired from the fair, so it's going to be tough.

Titanoboa curajonesis is the largest snake ever discovered, and we'll come back to that little note later.

This colossal reptile offers a fantastic window into the bygone era and challenges our understanding of both snake evolution and ancient ecosystems.

So Titanoboa was not only long, but also heavily built, extremely massive.

Estimates suggest the average length is about 12.8 meters, aka 42 feet, with our largest specimen on record being around 46 feet long.

And weighing an estimated 2,400 pounds.

Anybody cares.

They weigh as much as a Ford Taurus.

And that was a great collaboration again.

And we went out and started doing our research and started doing our research on this giant snake, this Titanoboa.

And then you know, started to realize that there's giant snake mythology in Brazil and Colombia and with all these indigenous tribes.

And I was like, oh, my God, maybe there's a combination of the two, you know, that merges together.