In recent days, a photo has been circulating on Social Media showing a python that supposedly ate a human. In Greece, we came across the news on “big” news websites and were surprised by the fact. How is it that such prestigious websites do not cross-check the news, or if there are no sources, do not use Google. But let's start from the beginning. According to HoaxSlayer, the image comes from South Africa and not from India.
What the story claims is not true. The same image has been circulating since September 2012. Linda Laina Nyatoro posted the photo on her Facebook page in June 2013, but she did not write anything that mentioned an attack by the snake on a drunken man who was sleeping as the story claims. Older versions of this hoax claim that the snake in the image swallowed a drunk man who was sleeping on the street, in Jakarta, Indonesia. None of these variations have been confirmed by any reliable source. While pythons have killed people, confirmed and documented cases of such snakes actually swallowing people are very rare.
And this, like all other hoaxes, relies on panic, or excitement and generally on the emotion they cause to spread. The strange thing about this story is, as we mentioned above, that even “big” websites spread the hoax. One possibility is that they didn’t cross-check it and the other is that they knew very well what they were publishing, but such strange things bring more clicks….
Source: secnews.gr
