Talk:Lamia/@comment-28066787-20161011184114/@comment-10429980-20161101020125

I fear your calculations may be a bit misguided. For instance a number of large snake species can eat things much larger than a human toddler and a good deal larger around than the widest part of their body (the many famous pics of anacondas eating caiman or pythons eating impala come to mind). Its just that for the safety of the snakes it is recommended to give prey no bigger than the width of their body when you keep one as a pet (i.e. they can eat bigger but it doesn't mean they should on a regular basis).

Further, its not simply our size that keeps even the largest anacondas known from being able to eat adult humans, its because we have very wide shoulders for a creature of our size, making us much harder to swallow (snakes can eat things wider than their bodies but there is a limit). When it comes to reports of snakes consuming humans, the few of any veracity tend to indicate the limit would be a young teenager, not a toddler.

Also, many lamia art designs (including KC's) have their snake bodies substantially shorter than would be the case in a real anaconda of similar width. Overall their bodies tend to be fairly short and stocky by snake standards (though not to the extremes of blood pythons or gaboon vipers), and this should be considered when talking about whether their power is closer to a modern constrictor or Titanaboa. Titanaboa is thought to have been around forty feet long, but most lamia designs are twenty feet or less in length.