Quote Originally Posted by reptileexperts View Post
Reticulated Pythons have slight serrations on their teeth and are recurved fangs. This enables them to easy cut into and grab food that they are puling into their body. A bite from a large snake can be an extremely dangerous situation. While ball pythons may be a joke and give a little blood, an adult retic is a matter of how YOU handle the bite. When a bite occurs you must remain calm and not pull away. If you jerk back there is a great chance that you will 1) tear the flesh wide open, 2) break teeth off into your bite area potentially getting lodged and causing infection or need for surgery to remove later on (Shane Castello just had a retic tooth removed surgically from a smaller male bite). The image of the 14' bite, while sever, is not worst case scenario. Had he jerked his arm back in the bite, it would've wound up even worse. Everytime I open a giants cage I remind myself mentally, if you get bit, stay calm and grab the head. Do not jerk back!!!
I completely overlooked the potential for ending up with a foreign object imbedded in a wound. That's an excellent point. Your point about the 14ft retic being worse had he jerked back is also interesting. Not jerking back from a bite is a good idea with ANY snake, but I've always thought of it in terms of preventing the snake from being injured.

When I said that the retic bite could easily have been lethal, I was looking at it from the perspective that had the snake held on long enough, it could have prevented him from getting pressure on the wound to slow the bleeding. Bleeding out from a severed artery can happen VERY rapidly. Yet another reason to always maintain a healthy level of respect for these big guys.

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