Question: Disclaimer: This is not a duplicate of [this question](https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/78778/how-would-a-giant-marine-snake-like-creature-survive). This question deals with a specifically non-marine snake. 

My fantasy story requires a giant snake. The easiest way to create one (as far as food goes, at least) is to have it be marine, but I don't want to tie my setting to the ocean coast. For that reason, I want a giant snake which is land-based (or at least not ocean-going). 

The most immediate problem I see with this is food: snakes seem to operate on two basic strategies: 

1. **Strangulation.** The snake lies in wait, crushing its victims or drowning them.
2. **Venom.** The snake lies in wait, relying on fast reflexes to strike its target with paralyzing/killing venom, making for an easy meal.

The problem I see my snake having is its size. It's going to be too big to hide, and I can't really see it moving fast enough to poison anything. What is its strategy when it comes to food? 

If there are other problems involved with a giant snake, please let me know and feel free to address them as well. 

**How can I get a giant non-marine snake?** 

*Notes:* 

* The snake needs to be six feet wide in diameter. This is a must. There is no requirement on length, but I would imagine this width will make the snake very long.
* The climate is tropical. Large trees are plentiful.
* While I don't want a marine snake, lakes, rivers, or other bodies of water are perfectly fine.

Answer: 
**Hiding**

Since you say fresh water is OK, I'd make it live in swampy / forest-surrounded lakes. It's pretty much impossible to see anything in murky water, so 'too big to hide' shouldn't be a concern as long as the water is more than six feet deep. 

Given that big pythons and such can go months without eating, it might even coil up and cover itself with vegetation, thus disguising itself as a hummock in the swamp.

**Food supply**

This thing is going to be absolutely huge. It would probably weigh something like 60 tons\* even if relatively short, say 80 feet / 25 meters.

However, that's not necessarily completely unreasonable. The Sperm Whale is about that mass, and its a macropredator. And as a mammal, it has a much higher metabolism (and thus higher food needs) than this low-metabolism snake will. 

So you're probably best off with a large region with lakes, rivers, swamp, forest etc. (maybe something like the Mississippi Delta & Atchafalaya swamp on the US Gulf Coast before its development by humans) Wetlands can be very biologically productive, and you could have its main diet be things like alligators and large fish (paddlefish, alligator gar, and giant catfish for example).

\*body radius - 0.9m, cross sectional area is pi \* r^2 or 2.54 m^2, total volume 2.54 \* 25 or 63.5 cubic meters). If this is a water-dwelling creature, it should have roughly neutral buoyancy, so about 1 ton per cubic meter.
If you're only worried about food, then make it an ambush predator that will happily snack on anything silly enough to walk in it's mouth at any time but active mostly at night. Tropical jungles can hide tanks and plane wrecks from views, they can hide a six foot snake head.

The snakes main problem would be the noise it makes moving around but it could use that as part of it's hunting strategy to trap prey by circling in on the prey so that when it hears the snake and runs, it actually runs into another part of the snake ready to grab it and squeeze it to death.