Trouble with the animation pivot

Hi! Thanks for taking the time to help

I have this Maya animated snake that I want to bring into Unity3D. What happens is that once in Unity the pivot makes the animation look way jankier than it is. I need the snake to move around like in the animation in Maya. Is there a way of disabling the pivot that pins it down in place?

In the first part of the video you can see that the snakes turns around and moves away. In Unity the snake's head is stuck in place so the whole animation looks silly.

Any ideas on how to fix it?

p.s. I've tried turning on Root Motion, didn't help...

Thx again!