Will Smith Travel Series Shows Actor Seeing New Giant Anaconda Species

New footage of the giant anaconda species discovered during filming for Will Smith’s National Geographic travel series has been released.

In a clip of Pole to Pole with Will Smith, obtained by LiveScience, the 57-year-old actor could be seen on a boat going down a river in Ecuador with venom expert Bryan Fry, expedition leader Carla Perez and Indigenous Waorani guides when the group notices a gigantic anaconda on the banks.

The local guides immediately stepped in, got off the boat and attempted to immobilize the snake so that Fry and Smith would be able to take one of its scales for their snake genetics study.

“Let them try to control this,” Fry could be seen advising Smith, as the actor made a surprised face.

“That’s gigantic. Wow!” Smith exclaimed of the snake, which Fry estimated was up to 17 feet long.

Once the guides had the snake under control, Smith and Fry could be seen getting off the boat to examine the creature close up. The Bad Boys star noted, “that was scary, even from the boat.” He then asked the guides if it was “safe” in their native language and they confirmed it was.

Fry then explained to Smith that they want to “take a piece of one” of the snake’s scales so they could “measure the accumulation of pollutants in the water.” However, he said that they needed a scale from its “belly” and asked Smith to “help,” which the actor was hesitant to do. 

“Yeah, nah. I’m a little nervous,” Smith told Fry, who then encouraged him, “You can do it.”

He then instructed one guide to lift the snake’s belly up and asked the Oscar winner to “wipe away any little mud and debris” there. Fry got scissors and noted that he was just going to “cut along” the area that Smith wiped clean. He then cleanly cut off a piece and stuck it into a vial to be studied later. 

The actor could be seen blowing air out of his mouth in relief, as Fry told him, “There you go. There’s our sample. We can do all the research on this animal with just that one tiny little piece.” 

“That’s fantastic,” Smith said as he held up the sample. 

The sample turned out to be very useful, as it and the other samples collected helped scientists to discover that northern and southern green anacondas — which had previously been believed to have been the same species — were actually two two genetically distinct species, Fry shared in a release from the University of Queensland.

According to Fry, the northern and southern green anacondas’ diverged nearly 10 million years ago and differ genetically by 5.5%. He added, “It’s quite significant — to put it in perspective, humans differ from chimpanzees by only about 2 percent.”

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The northern green anaconda, the species Fry’s team documented and identified, appears to reach larger sizes and have a different, smaller geographic range in the Amazon than the southern green anaconda.

According to National Geographic, green anacondas are non-venomous, constricting snakes native to South America and are members of the boa family. The reptiles are considered the heaviest snakes in the world. On average, they live up to 10 years in the wild.

Pole to Pole with Will Smith premieres on Disney+ on Jan. 13.