The python is a recurring motif in the goddess myths. The serpent appears as the companion to the Baccantes and the Lamiae. Serpents form the Medusa's hair, and are draped about Minerva's collar. A serpent speaks to Eve in the Garden of Eden and is twice featured in the ancient zodiac. Serpents were kept Sappho's temple, and at later temples such as Delphi, where the oracle was called the pythoness. After the fall of Sappho's temple, the new god Apollo assumed many of the rights and powers previously attributed to the goddess. Apollo's first act on assuming office was to apologise in song for having slain the Python.

But what of real, rather than mythological pythons?  The python family has many characteristics which distinguish it from those of other snakes. These differences are so great that it is believed that the pythons have a different ancestry to that of the elapid (front-fanged) and colubrid (rear-fanged) poisonous snakes. The python is generally larger, slower, and more muscular than the poisonous snakes. It possesses a larger brain, and a more extensive nervous system. It kills by constriction alone, that is, it squeezes the breath out of its prey, and maintains the pressure until it is dead from lack of oxygen. It does bite, to secure its initial grip on its' meal. When the prey is lifeless, the python uncoils and begins to ingest it whole. This process is made possible by the snakes' ability to unhinge its' jaws, and by the copious saliva produced by the snake's single large gland. To an observer this procedure resembles birth-in-reverse, a metaphor which is played on in the ouroubos symbol of immortality.

Some Australian pythons are nine metres in length, but the smaller specimens may be handled, if a little care is taken. A smaller species called Childrens Python, is a common pet, though this may be because indulgent  parents are unaware that the snake was named for its discoverer, Mr Children , and not for its temperament.

The python is an egg-layer. Up to 15 leathery-shelled eggs are laid in a conical heap, and the snake coils about them with its head at the top, and remains so coiled until the eggs hatch. This habit of fixity means that it is perfectly feasible for the pythoness of the goddess temples to have kept live snakes, and for the python to have been present while a pilgrim consulted the oracle. The snake would have fixed the visitor with an hypnotic glare, but would not have moved from its position, twined about the spilote. Incidentally, the scientific name of the python from these parts,  Morelia spilotes  means  'dark one from the spilote'.
 

A further feature of pythons may be relevant. The camouflage pattern on the python's skin is extremely variable. No two snakes have the same pattern, although the formula for the pattern is constant. Three colours occur - against a background of medium coloured scales, dark scales surround areas of light scales, so that a pattern resembling a row of letters may be formed. It is therefore possible to choose as a temple serpent a snake on whose body is written the name of the Goddess.