The Tribune Timur reports, that the man swallowed whole by a 23-foot python in Indonesia earlier this week has been identified as Akbar Bin Ramil Salubriong. Akbar, 25, was trying to harvest palm oil so he could provide for his wife and two children when the python swallowed him. Akbar’s death went viral on Wednesday, after footage of villagers slicing open the cold-blooded killer emerged online.
Villagers in Central Mamuju Regency told the outlet that the young man was planning on using the money from his farming to relocate his family from a nearby town where they had been staying. His wife, Muna, had gone to the town to give birth to their second child.
The discovery of Akbar on Wednesday has left locals in the area in fear for their lives especially since this is the time of year when they are working around snakes’ terrain the most, according to the Jakarta Post.
“These days, we are supposed to harvest palm oil,” Junaedi, secretary of Salubiro village in West Sulawesi, told the newspaper Wednesday.
“But most of the farmers, especially those whose farms are near Akbar’s, are still shocked, afraid that more pythons are still out there.”
Junaedi said the last time a reticulated python as large as the one that attacked Akbar was seen in the area was back in the 1990s. That sighting would have come as area forests, the serpent’s natural hunting grounds, first began to be transformed into palm-oil plantations.