Want to make a quick $50,000? Go out and catch yourself a snake.

But it can't be just any old snake. To earn the Wildlife Conservation Society's $50,000 reward, the snake must be at least 30 feet long. And it must be delivered alive and in good health, accompanied by all necessary permits and paperwork, to the Bronx Zoo in New York City.

Now, before you embark on the Great Snake Hunt, there's something else you should know.

The reward was first offered in the early 1900s by President Theodore Roosevelt, a close friend of William T. Hornaday, the Bronx Zoo's director at the time. And the money--initially $1,000, then $10,000, and now $50,000--is still unclaimed.

Why? Because it's quite possible that snakes don't grow that large.

Throughout history, explorers' tales abound of giant snakes measuring 30, 40, and even 50 feet in length. For example, in 1907 a British adventurer named Percy Fawcett claimed to have shot a giant anaconda (Eunectes murinus) measuring 62 feet. Since Fawcett didn't think to bring back the carcass, few people believed his claim.

In 1959, a Belgian helicopter pilot named Remy Van Lierde is said to have photographed a giant snake as it slithered across the Congo floor. The snake was estimated at about 40 or 50 feet in length. But again, no carcass was collected to confirm this rather sensational report. Furthermore, the purported photograph is about as convincing as a black-and-white picture of Godzilla or Mothra.

Many snake skins have been accurately measured at more than 30 feet. However, as most leatherworkers know, a snake's skin can be easily stretched without obvious distortion, adding as much as a quarter of the skin's original length.

Just how big can a snake really get? The Guinness Book of World Records credits a reticulated python (Python reticulatus) that was slain on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in 1912 as the longest snake ever reliably measured. According to Guinness, this whopper was 39.4 feet in length. A close second, Guinness maintains, was a 38.3-foot African rock python (Python sebae) shot on the Ivory Coast in 1932.

Alas, you can't always believe what you read in print, even in Guinness. In his 1931 book Snakes of the World, the renowned herpetologist (snake expert) Raymond Ditmars wrote, "In all of these years, in an endeavor to obtain record measurements [of reticulated pythons] from authoritative sources, the figures stand at 33 feet and another a few inches over 30 feet." Of the African rock python, the former Bronx Zoo curator stated, "It appears doubtful if this snake attains a length of much over 20 feet and the average run of adult examples is 16 to 17 feet."

Fact overrules fiction in the case of Fawcett's giant anaconda as well. While the film Anaconda claims that these animals can grow to 40 feet, scientific studies indicate otherwise. In a recent survey of more than 1,000 wild anacondas in Brazil, the largest was around 17 feet and 100 pounds.

"It's possible that there are a few giants out there," says John Behler, curator of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Department of Herpetology. However, these would have to be extremely rare.

"Out of a world population of 5 billion people, there are probably fewer than a dozen over 8 feet tall," Behler points out.

The largest snake ever held in captivity was the aptly named Colossus, a reticulated python in the collection of Pittsburgh's now-defunct Havilland Zoo. When Colossus arrived from Thailand in the mid-1950s, he measured a respectable 22 feet.

With good care and a nutritious diet that included a freshly killed pig every month, the super-size serpent thrived and grew. At the time of his death in April 1966, Colossus had reached a record length of 28.5 feet and a weight of more than 300 pounds. The reptile's remains were sent to the Carnegie Museum for preservation--and, in the X-Files-esque tradition of many great animal anomalies, were promptly lost by the museum's curatorial staff.

Until recently, the distinction of being the biggest, if not the baddest, snake in the world belonged to Samantha, a 26-foot-long reticulated python at--where else?--the Bronx Zoo. When Samantha died of old age in November 2002, the crown was passed to Marci, a 25-foot reticulated python on display at the San Antonio Zoo.

"It's conceivable that Colossus could've gotten even larger," says Ray Bamrick, lead reptile keeper at the Pittsburgh Zoo.

Many reptile species experience what is called indeterminate growth, Bamrick says. That is, much like the Energizer Bunny, they keep growing and growing and growing throughout their lives.

The pace of this growth is determined by the temperature of the snake's surroundings and the availability of food. Juvenile pythons grow rapidly, shedding their skins five to seven times per year. As they mature, their growth rate slows down. As adults, they shed their scaly dermal layers about two or three times a year, Bamrick says.

Behler dismisses this notion of continual growth as rubbish. He says that data from catch-and-release studies of snakes in the wild suggest that adults reach a peak size, then gradually diminish in size over the years.

"Imagine that you have a sausage casing that's stuffed with a modest amount of meat," Behler explains. "When you measure the casing, it's going to be one length. But take the same casing and really pack it with meat. Now the skin becomes more like a ball--it gets shorter and rounder. That's what happens, more or less, with a big, well-fed snake."

Becoming well-fed in the wild is no mean feat for a python, anaconda, or boa constrictor snake. All three of these species are constrictors. Lacking venom, these snakes capture prey by coiling their bodies around it. By tightening the coils, the constrictors literally squeeze the life out of the struggling captive.

"Pythons and boas seek rather moderate-sized prey and lurk in specific locations where they find such quarry," Ditmars wrote. Thus they may be required to wait for weeks between meals--not a great method for growing rapidly, that's for sure.

"As to pythons swinging from trees and grasping and constricting cattle as some stories go, all I can say is that writers of the same have surprising imaginations," Ditmars observed. "A big anaconda would be satisfied in capturing a 50-pound capybara. It would probably be afraid of a full grown tapir and retreat from it, but [would] make a stroke for a young one, possibly a third-grown individual, and be able to engulf it."

It's the law of the jungle, though: Those not busy eating are busy being eaten. Snake meat is a delicacy in Southeast Asia--and with the ever-increasing human population in that part of our planet, the demand for sources of protein remains on the rise.

That may be another reason why long snakes are in such short supply, Behler suggests. It is also part of the reason that the Wildlife Conservation Society is still offering the prize. By putting one of these giants on public display, the WCS will be showing the world one of the many natural wonders we'd be missing if we fail to conserve the planet's dwindling resources.