Man who Captured 18-Foot Python Nearly strangled while posing for Selfies. VIDEO ATTACHED

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• Baikunthapur forest range officer poses for photos with snake
• Python squirms and coils while in his grasp, nearly strangles him
• Officer survives, video published by news agency

The python was a writhing ribbon of muscle thicker than Sanjoy Dutta's arms, and yet he garlanded himself with it to pose for shutterbugs.

For a while, things seemed to be going fine; a crowd had gathered, and mobile phones were jostling to get the Baikunthapur forest range officer into their frames.

But then, the snake decided it had had enough.

Pythons are constrictors -- they don't kill by injecting venom into their prey (like cobras), but by squeezing the life out of them. And the one Dutta was carrying began to squirm and coil menacingly.