PET SNAKES GONE WILD

Fears grow over invasion of apex beast that devours prey six times its size: 'Tip of the iceberg'

 

By James Cirrone 

Daily Mail

Dec 8, 2024

 

198-pound Burmese python fought 5 men before capture in Florida.

 

The invasion of the Florida Everglades by an alien predator with no known enemies has reached a tipping point. 

Biologists are now warning of mass extinctions of native animal populations if the invasive species is not brought under control soon.  

A Burmese python can devour prey six times its size, including whole deer and alligators, a study by three scientists with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida found.

The researchers discovered one 115.2-pound female python consuming a 77-pound white-tailed deer while gathering data for the study, which appeared in the scientific journal 'Reptiles & Amphibians'.

A video taken by Ian Bartoszek, one of the authors, showed the snake's jaw unhinged so wide that its mouth could fit around the deer's entire torso.

'Watching an invasive apex predator swallow a full-sized deer in front of you is something that you will never forget,' he said.

Scientists knew pythons attacked foxes, bobcats, raccoons and other animals, but the discovery they can eat creatures as large as 14ft long alligators has sparked concern.

'The impact the Burmese python is having on native wildlife cannot be denied. This is a wildlife issue of our time for the Greater Everglades ecosystem,' Bartoszek said.

 

The Everglades is a massive wetland at the southern tip of Florida. It spans 1.5 million acres and has endangered species such as the West Indian manatee, the American crocodile and the Loggerhead sea turtle

A 115.2-pound female Burmese python is seen devouring a 77-pound white-tailed deer somewhere in Everglades National Park

 

The 'gape' of Burmese pythons - the scientific term for how wide their mouths open - reached up to 8.7 inches in diameter based on previous studies, according to the Conservancy.

Based on the three snakes the scientists recently captured and held in captivity, it's now evident their gape can in fact widen to 10.2 inches, or a circumference of 32 inches.

With that size of mouth opening, these pythons were able to eat animals six times larger than similar-sized snakes of different species, the Conservancy concluded.

Pythons are able to do this because their lower jawbones are not fused at the front. 

Their skin is also incredibly elastic which allows them to stretch over an animal that's seemingly much larger than them.

Now that it's known pythons in the Everglades National Park can eat pretty much anything, the scientists who worked on the study vowed to be more vigilant.

'Besides the large absolute size of the deer that was eaten being impressive, our anatomical measurements indicate this deer was very near the size limit on the prey that could be consumed by this snake,' said Bruce Jayne, a professor at the University of Cincinnati.

He continued: 'Hence, these snakes resemble over achievers by sometimes testing the limits of what their anatomy allows rather than being slackers that eat only "snack size" prey.'

In 2022, a geoscientist who doubles as a bikini model shared footage of her and her team removing a five foot alligator from the bowels of an 18-foot Burmese python.

 

Contractors with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission show off a Burmese python caught Tuesday, August 13, 2024, in the Everglades

 

Rosie Moore told DailyMail.com at the time that the python was located in the Everglades. And like the scientists from the Conservancy, she too was worried about the snakes' impact on the local wildlife.

'They called us and they said there was a large object in it, we thought it was either a deer or an alligator,' she said. 'They called us and they said there was a large object in it, we thought it was either a deer or an alligator.' 

Researchers clarified that they don't precisely know how many Burmese pythons in the wild are actually capable of swallowing whole deer, but the Conservancy did identify one in 2018 that was able to eat a white-tailed fawn bigger than the snake itself.

Burmese pythons were not always native to Florida. There are conflicting reports on how they became so numerous - with 'tens of thousands' of them estimated to be in the Greater Everglades - but most sources agree they were originally people's pets.

The practice of Floridians domesticating the snakes dates back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, even though they are fully capable of killing and eating a human being.

Burmese pythons were introduced to the state via the exotic pet trade as early as 1979, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

It is believed that many owners of these dangerous constrictor snakes didn't know what to do with them when they swelled past 200 pounds and grew as long as 20 feet - so they let them out of their cages and into the wild where they proliferated.

Over the past 12 years, the Conservancy's Burmese python research team has tagged 120 snakes with radio tags to continually study their behavior in the wild. They have also removed 770 adult pythons from a 150-square-mile area in southwest Florida.

 

Donna Kalil poses with one of her catches. Kalil is a hunter with the South Florida Water Management District’s python elimination program

 

Jayne estimated that if each one of these snakes ate just one deer as big as they could swallow, it would amount to more than 13,000 pounds of deer.

To put that in perspective, the average American eats about 224 pounds of red meat and poultry in a year, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

'We have been removing pythons and advancing invasive snake science for over a decade. These animals continue to impress us each season and one thing we’ve learned for certain is to not underestimate the Burmese python,' Bartoszek said.

Jayne wholeheartedly agreed with his colleague, adding: 'This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of their impact on prey populations.'