Most people these days record their everyday activities by taking selfies. If you’re out with friends and want all your friends on social media to know, you snap a quick selfie. You’ve tried a particularly good restaurant? Take a selfie. In the midst of your dream holiday? It is certainly time to take that well-deserved selfie. However, for one man, who dared to take a selfie with a python, it came as a reminder that sometimes selfies can kill.
Sanjay Dutta, an Indian forest ranger who was called out to Sahebbari, a village in West Bengal, on Sunday, discovered the hard way that not everyone likes to be included in selfies. Dutta had been called to the village after reports of a 30-foot-long Indian rock python swallowed a goat near a school, according to the New York Post .
Once he had safely contained the animal, Sanjay decided it was time to immortalize his feat and reached for his phone to snap a quick shot. Wrapping the python around his shoulders, the forest ranger attempted to take a selfie with the snake.
However, things then went terribly wrong.
Within a matter of moments, the python had wrapped itself dangerously around Sanjay’s neck and was constricting tightly. According to reports, Sanjay was visibly panicked once this occurred. Although, Dutta has insisted that he “was not scared for even a moment.”
Quick-thinking locals managed to help the man to escape the death hug and, unbelievably, Sanjay was able to walk away from the incident.
This incident comes only days after this Inquisitr report that saw a woman consumed whole by a 23-foot-long python in Indonesia.
It is also a stark reminder that sometimes selfies do, in fact, kill.
In fact, in 2015, USA Today reported that more people died as a result of taking selfies than of those that were killed by sharks.
And, if you are a resident of India, it is time to really take care when considering a selfie. According to a study by Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania, US, and Indraprastha Institute of Information in Delhi, India, and reported on by the Telegraph , of the 127 reported selfie deaths recorded in an 18-month time frame between March 2014 and September 2016, 76 of those occurred in India. Mumbai, in particular, seems to be the worst place to take a selfie if you want to live to talk about it.
So, next time you go to take that must-have selfie, please weigh up the cost it might have before snapping the picture.
