I was wondering if they were trying to make it "puke" to save the snake or see if it was a person or what. Found this interesting post.
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Thought I would pop in and cover some of the questions here [ +3 interesting ]
The only large snake that shares the native range of a hippo is an african rock python. Anacondas (which is what this snake is) Live in South America. Look at the thing's t**s as it comes out. It's definately a capybara. You can find more info on it if you spell right in google

It's capybara, not capi. Capybara are semi aquatic...so is an anaconda. Capybara and caiman are among the adult anacondas favorite foods. So it's no shock that it ate the beast. Anacondas are by the way, THE largest snakes on the planet. Reticulated pythons get longer slightly on average but anacondas get much heavier. I have a large collection of snakes here and have been keeping and studying them for close to 35 years now and let me tell you... Snakes do puke sometimes for various reasons especially when they eat a large meal like this and then get slapped around with boat oars. Snake puke will run you out of the house. There is nothing that smells worse anywhere. Their gastric juices are much stronger than ours. EVERYTHING but keratin breaks down in it, even the bones are digested. Hair, fur, and hooves are made of keratin. Keratin does not breakdown or change when exposed to gastric acids. So basically all snake poop is is a tiny bit of waste and a whole lot of rodent fur that served as roughage for them. Snakes have a very primative digestive tract. It's a straight shot from mouth to rectum...no squiggles in the intestine. At any point, even 4 days or more after a meal, they can still puke. Snakes have absolute power over the peristaltic muscles that moves the food along and can reverse it at will. This is important because of their very slow metabolism. If because of parasites, loss of enzymes due to temperature change or illness...stress etc causes the meal to stop digesting properly, it will begin to sour and ga**es will start causing bloat. If the snake doesn't puke, it will die from necrosis of the bowl from having something rot in it. In this case, as mentioned, the snake dumped the meal in hopes to be able to better escape what she perceives and probably was "predation"
Unfortunatly for this snake, I'm sure anyone with the lack of respect enough to slap it till it pukes probably didn't walk away and leave her be. I'm guessing the big girl probably lost her head soon after they were through poking at her