Sunday 16 November 2014

What were the legendary man-eating snakes of Borneo?

Hundreds of years ago, eight children were taken from a village in Borneo - by "dragons". What were these terrifying beasts?

Presented by
Nadia Drake

Several centuries ago, a group of Borneo natives left their villages and headed deep into the jungle, searching for a home away from the Dutch colonialists who had begun spreading across their island. Eventually, they found a nice spot in the lowland rainforests near the mountains in Borneo's centre. They built houses and cultivated crops, and caught fish from the Burak river. All was well. Then children began vanishing.

One at a time, the kids disappeared, leaving behind baffled and frantic adults. This happened eight days in a row. Was it the work of a forest ghost, or jungle nomads, or a big carnivore like a clouded leopard? To find out, the villagers set a trap and baited it with another child, sacrificing one more life to stop the slaughter.

The creature that finally emerged from the river was huge, limbless and covered in scales. It was a snake, but one so overgrown they called it a dragon.

They found two huge, chocolate-brown adult dragons

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