3-008-385 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Great Python Serpent incubating at the Zoological Society's Gardens, Regent's Park, 1862. '...the keeper, on going to the compartment where the Python sebae from Western Africa is kept, found that during the night she had deposited a large heap of eggs. They were disposed in the form of a cone, round which the reptile had coiled its length, the head surmounting the coil...From an occasional interspace among the folds a glimpse of the eggs is obtained. The eggs are of a roundish form, and in size resemble that of the goose egg; they are covered with a white, soft, leathery substance. The reptile is very attentive to her charge, seldom leaving it, and on being looked at exhibits the greatest fierceness and anger, darting forward at its supposed enemy...In the same place with it was a male of the same species...and between them there always appeared to exist the greatest friendship. The time of incubation is not known for certain, such an event with the larger serpents never having happened before in England, but it is supposed to be from seven to eight weeks. We have considered this occurrence of sufficient importance to naturalists to merit space in this Journal...as it establishes the fact that serpents of this kind incubate their eggs'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.