A viral video showing an alleged snake being pulled from a woman’s mouth in Dagestan, Russia is raising an eyebrow among scientists and experts.
According to various media sources the “snake” crawled in the woman’s mouth while she was sleeping.
In the blurry video of the unconfirmed medical procedure reportedly performed on the woman, a four-foot-long parasite-like creature can be seen being removed from the throat of the patient.
It is unclear if the creature was still alive, reported The Sun.
Although Dagestan is located near the Caspian Sea, where snakes are said to be rich in diversity, some experts agree that it’s impossible for a snake to slither into a person’s mouth even while sleeping, unless it’s a corpse.
A research scientist at Texas A&M told a report of inverse.com that it could be a worm and not a serpent.
Toby Hibbitts said, “I think that this is a video of the removal of a parasitic roundworm.”
Emily Taylor, assistant professor at California Polytechnic State University, has the same observation with Hibbitts. She said that it’s more likely a gastrointestinal parasite than a snake.
Further, an opinion of a conservation biologist at Florida International University was also sought. Luke Linhoff told the report that the creature “does appear to be a snake.”
Linhoff added that based on the grainy video, it could be either an eel or large parasitic worm just like what the two other experts said.
Watch the video of the supposed operation performed on the woman:
