Tour guide reaches into the river to grab something. Seconds later, he’s dragged underwater in a fight for his life

A tour guide in Indonesia almost died when a huge python pulled him into a river and wrapped around his neck. The scary moment happened on the island of Borneo and was caught on camera. What started as a normal wildlife trip quickly turned into a battle to stay alive.

According to the New York Post, Heru is a tour guide who also catches snakes for a living. He was taking a group down the Sebangau River when they saw a big python lying by the edge of the water. The video shows Heru leaning over from the boat and putting his hand in the water to grab the snake by its head. But things went wrong fast when the python pulled him right off the boat.

The snake dragged the tour guide underwater in what became a desperate fight for his life. When Heru came back up to the surface, he was thrashing around in the water as the six-meter python started wrapping itself around his body. The snake squeezed his chest first, then moved up to his arms and neck, getting tighter and tighter the way pythons do when they try to kill their prey.

This is exactly why you don’t mess with giant snakes

The other people on the boat jumped in right away to help their guide. It took two men working together to get Heru free from the python. One man grabbed the snake by the head while the other one held onto its tail. They had to fight with the snake for almost a full minute before they could finally pull it off Heru’s body. Even after all that, Heru didn’t get hurt at all.

Mohamad Alisa was the one filming everything that happened. He said this python was bigger and stronger than any other snake the group had ever seen. “It was the biggest and strongest python we’ve ever seen,” Alisa said. He also talked about how the team treats animals. “Our principle is not to harm living creatures. Photography is purely for scientific purposes.”

When it was all over, the group caught the python and put it on the boat. They took some pictures with the huge snake and then let it go back into the wild. 

There are different types of pythons living in Borneo, including the reticulated python and the Borneo short-tailed python. Reticulated pythons are the world’s longest snake and some of the strongest when it comes to squeezing their prey. 

These snakes don’t have venom, so they kill animals by wrapping around them and squeezing until they can’t breathe anymore. They usually live in swamps, forests, and along rivers, but sometimes they come into places where people live when they’re looking for food.

This whole thing shows how humans and wild animals in Indonesia are running into each other more and more. People who study wildlife have been warning that pythons in Borneo and Sulawesi are getting used to smaller jungles by moving closer to rivers and farms. 

This isn’t the first time something like this has happened in Indonesia either. Earlier this year, a 61-year-old farmer died after a python that was 8.5 meters long attacked him while he was taking care of his animals. Snake problems like these keep happening all over the world, with some deadly snakes even trapping people in their own backyards.