In distant and hot Tunisia, camel drivers sometimes whisper chilling stories about huge and yet venomous snakes that can hide in the desert behind every dune.
They say that in the vicinity of the Tunisian city of Douz, there are mysterious creatures that can reach a length of 4.5 meters and the thickness of a human thigh. Mohammed Sharaa, a drover who spent his entire life in the desert, claimed that they can be found (of course, with a bad "barrack", that is, fate) in some areas bordering the Great Desert, as well as in the mountains not far from Gafsa, a settlement in southern Tunisia … Local residents are mortally afraid of these snakes because of their huge size, and most importantly, their special venom.
With these stories, the thought involuntarily arises: is there any connection between these creatures and those strange creatures that Roman soldiers saw in 255 BC in the same places, during the First Punic War.
According to ancient historians Titus Livy, Elius Tuberon and Seneca, the legionnaires of the Roman consul Marcus Atilius Regulus, who camped on the banks of the Baghrad (now Mejerda) River, met a huge "snake" that did not allow them to draw water. After a long struggle, in which they even had to use siege weapons and catapults loaded with heavy stones, the soldiers managed to finish off a monster of truly incredible size: 120 Roman feet, that is, 36 meters in length! According to the chroniclers, when the snake died, the stench from it spread throughout the district. His skin and jaws were brought to Rome and displayed publicly in the temple until 133 BC.
In the 16th century, the Arab geographer and traveler John Leo Africanus wrote that huge poisonous dragons live in the caves of the Atlas Mountains in North Africa.
In 1884, French diplomat and archaeologist Charles Tissot wrote about a poisonous snake that lives in the Tunisian Sahara and grows to 12-15 feet (3.6-4.5 meters) in length. The locals called her "taggerga".
In 1958, Belkuris Abd al-Qader, an Algerian serving in French units near the village of Beni Unif, claimed to have been attacked and bitten by a 43-foot (13.1 m) long snake that he managed to kill. For some time he kept snake skin, which the inhabitants of the surrounding villages came to see, but in the end, the Algerian sold it to someone for 45 thousand francs of that time.
In 1959, a snake 120 feet long (36.5 m) and a three-foot (91 cm) ridge on a huge head appeared near the French garrison located at Ain Sefra, Algeria. The nomads claimed that she devoured their horses and sheep. In the end, the gigantic snake, which had just dined on a camel, became heavy and fell into a ditch, which the nomads dug and covered with branches.
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In order to kill the monster, the 26th battalion of dragoons was called in under the command of captains Grassen and Laveau. At first, the soldiers fired at the snake with carbines, but this was clearly not enough, so they had to use machine guns. They intended to preserve the skin of the killed reptile, but after a while they could not find any of its remains.
Nomads in the Moroccan region of Abadla, neighboring Algeria, also talked about the "big snake" that could jump and attack a person. It reached at least ten meters in length, and its head was decorated with a growth similar to that of horned vipers, only this snake exceeded their size by five times.
On January 6 or 7, 1967, a snake about 30 feet long (9.1 m) with a ridge on its head was seen by four eyewitnesses at the construction site of the Algerian Djord Torba Dam, Bechar Governorate. This reptile was unlucky: a bulldozer driver named Hamza Rahmani crushed it on rocks with his bulldozer.
When the animal calmed down (and the convulsions lasted 25 minutes), the workers were able to see it more closely. The snake's intimidating fangs were curved backward and reached almost 2.5 inches (6.3 cm) in length, the skin was dark brown, the eyes were also brown, and the belly was white.
The skin of the snake was shown to the assistant director of the construction site, and he said that in the vicinity, reptiles 11-12 meters long are not uncommon. Another worker claimed that he saw a snake 10.5 meters long, yellow-brown in color, with black stripes, a white belly and a kind of horns on its head sticking out forward.
Later that year, Hamza Rahmani stumbled upon a snake trail leading to barrels of oil, which, as it turned out, the reptile gladly devoured. A few days later, he saw the snake itself, which coiled in circles in the shadow falling from the pile of rubble. Its length was approximately 18-23 feet (5.4-7 m).
On the same dam, two years later, a snake with a length of 12 to 15 meters was again seen.
Pythons and vipers
To what species can the described creatures belong? Scientists have several versions, for example, it could be a hieroglyphic python.
The hieroglyph python, or rock python (Python sebae) is a very large non-venomous snake from the genus of real pythons. One of the four largest snakes in the world. The body length can exceed 6 m and the weight reaches almost 100 kg. The area of distribution of the species covers the territory south of the Sahara from the West African coast to the east through 6600 km to the Horn of Africa. It feeds on rodents, birds, reptiles and large mammals, in particular antelopes. There have been cases of hieroglyph pythons eating impalas weighing up to 58 kg, warthogs, young Nile crocodiles and even small leopards. Hieroglyphic pythons are characterized by extremely aggressive behavior; there are cases of fatal attacks on humans. In 2002, a hieroglyphic python swallowed a ten-year-old boy in South Africa.
Hieroglyph python (Python sebae)
Dr. Bugon believed that the snake skin from the First Punic War could in fact be the intestines of a python, which in a ten-meter snake should reach a length of 36.5 meters. However, Charles Tissot was less skeptical and believed that it really was a snake skin, but only very stretched on purpose!
In the south of Morocco, the poisonous noisy viper (Bitis arietans) lives - a snake from the genus of African vipers. It is one of the most common snakes on the African continent, and its bite can be fatal to humans. The largest known specimen reached a length of 1.9 m, had a body girth of up to 40 cm and weighed more than 6 kg. It may seem to someone that this is not so much, but, believe me, this viper seems even bigger when you meet in person!
Noisy viper (Bitis arietans)
The horned viper (Cerastes cerastes) also fits the description of the monster, although its length reaches only about 70 cm.
Gyurza (Vipera lebetina)
Thus, based on the size of the canines, which were allegedly removed from the jaw of a reptile crushed by a bulldozer at the Gyord Torba Dam, two versions can be assumed. If this snake was poisonous, then it is a species of viper that is still unknown to science, 7 feet (2.1 m) long. By the way, a tiny (only half a meter in length) tuft-brow viper (Bitis cornuta) from South Africa has bunches of 2, 3 or even 4 horns above each eye. Now imagine a relative of the 9-meter long beam-browed viper!
Beam-browed viper (Bitis cornuta)
If the fangs belonged to a non-venomous snake, then it could be an unknown species of python 10-14 meters long, which leads us to the last and most intriguing, cryptozoological version: what if the mysterious tagerga is the surviving North African python Gigantophis garstini?
The gigantophis absorbs the meritrium. Drawing by John Lavas
Gigantophis, which was more than 10 meters long, more than any existing snake species, lived about 40 million years ago in northern Sahara, where Egypt and Algeria are now. And don't say that this version is incredible, otherwise you will have to remind you of the story of the discovery of the Komodo monitor lizards!
The article was prepared based on the materials of the books of Bernard Eyvelmans, George M. Eberhart, Nikolai Nepomnyashchy.