Since 2019, images of a snake allegedly swallowing an AK-47 have been published by both Russian-speaking and Western users of social networks. We have verified the authenticity of these photographs..

Photos of a snake that allegedly swallowed a Kalashnikov assault rifle have periodically appeared on social networks over the past year and a half. Usually the images are accompanied by short statements like “The snake swallowed the AK-47” - there are such publications, for example, in one of the groups in "VKontakte". User of “Mail.Ru Answers” seriously interested, which is shown in the pictures with an unusual snake. In some communities - for example, on Pikabu — such messages are accompanied by humorous captions. Images of a snake swallowing a machine gun are also available on foreign resources. So, a user of the site 9gag is ironic notices, that since it is an AK-47, then the snake is probably from Russia.

Despite the relatively complex shape of the Kalashnikov assault rifle, many Internet users believed that the snake was capable of swallowing it. Probably, this belief is based on news regularly coming from all over the world about how picky reptiles are in food. For example, there have been reports in the media about snakes of various species swallowing porcupine, deer and even person. Some animals do not disdain frankly inedible objects. For example, in 2020, Australian veterinarians had to help a python that decided to eat a huge beach towel, but in India failed save a snake that swallowed a large plastic bottle.

The snake that supposedly swallowed the machine gun appears in only two photographs, as well as in their cropped or 90-degree copies. The first of the original pictures shows the animal in close-up, the second shows it on a hillside, with a temple clearly visible in the background. The position in which the snake lies is approximately the same in both cases, only in the second photo the animal seems to have been slightly turned counterclockwise.

The earliest publication we could find with these images is fast Vasily Slonov on Facebook. The photographs are accompanied by the caption “Python and AK-47”, as well as several hashtags, including #art, #contemporaryart, #Siberianironicconceptualism and #1112gallery.

“Gallery 11.12” is an exhibition space located at the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow. For several years the gallery cooperates with artist Vasily Slonov from Krasnoyarsk. Slonov actually has a work called “Python and AK-47” - he created it was made of rubber in 2019. According to the website Artprice.com, to purchase such a “snake” Can for €5000.