Snakes able to eat people?

[hickengruendler]

No: HPFGUIDX 159079

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Clifford Vander Yacht" 
<CliffVDY at ...> wrote:
>
> This set of images is now circulating on the internet. You be the
> judge of its accuracy. It does bring up the question of Nagini 
versus
> Bertha Jorkins or Frank Bryce. A comment from justcarol67 is 
included. 
>  
> http://pm-publications.rrhistorical-2.com/Snake.htm
>

Hickengruendler:

Eeeewww. Awful. 

About the general question:

Of course snakes can eat people. They can eat much bigger things, 
than people, (though it depends on the snake). Just as an example, 
think about Kaa the snake in the Disney version of the Jungle Book. 
(In the book she's Mowgli's friend).

However, I'm not sure, if Nagini can, because I have no idea, what 
kind of snake Nagini is meant to be. From the description in the 
book, I got the distinct impression, that she's at least a Boa, and 
therefore very well able to eat a man. In fact, I was sure she ate at 
least Frank Bryce's body, and didn't Voldemort want to feed Harry at 
her at the graveyard?

But the Easter Egg on JKR's website, which gave us the structure and 
plan for OotP, mentioned that Nagini was the snake, which wounded 
Arthur at the ministry. And this was a venomous Snake. In this case, 
I am pretty sure she couldn't have eaten any humans, since venomous 
snakes are much smaller, and I have never heard of a venomous snake 
being able to eat a human. The biggest venomous snake on the world is 
the Cobra, and if a Cobra had bitten Arthur, he would have been dead 
before Harry even entered Dumbledore's office. Therefore it must have 
been a smaller one. On the other hand, in the book itself the snake 
was never named as Nagini, it was just a random snake, and Harry did 
not seem to have recognized her. (Of course I have no idea, how easy 
it is to recognise a snake). Therefore maybe JKR changed the species 
while writing GoF and made Nagini a bigger snake. In this case, yes, 
I assume she ate Frank and probably Bertha. (And it makes it even 
more of a relief, that Harry managed to safe Cedric's body).