The largest Burmese python ever seen in Florida has actually been found, drawn out of its hiding location in the Everglades by scientists who utilized another python as bait, National Geographic reported (opens in brand-new tab).
The gigantic snake was a woman, determining almost 18 feet (5.4 meters) long and weighing 215 pounds (97 kgs) — 30 pounds (13.6 kg) more than the next-largest python ever found in the state. Most Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) that are found in Florida variety in between 6 and 10 feet (1.8 and 3 m) long, although in their native environments in Southeast Asia, the snakes frequently reach 18 feet long (5.4 m) and the largest can reach lengths of 20 feet (6 m) or more, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (opens in brand-new tab).
Since being presented in Florida in the 1970s, the intrusive pythons have actually reproduced effectively in the southern areas of the state, where they victimize numerous native birds and mammals, along with the periodic alligator or animal canine.
Despite being bigger than the majority of Florida’s native snake types, Burmese pythons are very hard to identify within the huge marshlands, forests and subtropical forests of the Everglades and nearby locations. In an effort to lower these intrusive populations by drawing reproductively active women out of hiding, python trackers at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, a Naples-based company, implant GPS trackers inside male pythons and then send out these “scout snakes” crawling into the wild, according to National Geographic.
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“Large reproductive female pythons are very important to remove from these ecosystems,” because they are disproportionately capable of producing many offspring, Sarah Funck, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, told National Geographic.
A 12-foot-long (3.7 m) scout snake named Dionysus — nicknamed Dion — served as bait for the record-setting female that the team captured, back in December 2021.
At that time, the team noticed Dion had stationed himself in one particular location near Naples, within the western Everglades’ ecosystem. When they went to check on their scout snake, they found him coiled near a monstrous female; after an intense wrestling match, the researchers managed to wrangle the huge female into a bag, which they then secured in a tub and transported to their research facility. (Dion, meanwhile, survived the encounter and continued scouting for the Conservancy.)
After euthanizing the female snake, the team performed a necropsy on the hefty python. Inside its body, they found a record 122 egg “roots” — roughly spherical structures that mature into eggs once fertilized. In the snake’s digestive tract, they found bits of fur, clumps of dissolved bone and a chunk of a hoof, evidence that the python’s last meal was an adult white-tailed deer.
Based on similar necropsies conducted in the past, scientists have learned that Burmese pythons prey on an estimated 24 mammal species, 47 bird species and two reptile species in the state of Florida, according to National Geographic.
“These pythons have the capability to completely change the environment, and I would state they most likely currently have,” Kristen Hart, an ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey Wetland and Aquatic Research Center and a collaborator with the conservancy team, told National Geographic.
Read more about the record-breaking python at natgeo.com (opens in brand-new tab).
Originally released on Live Science.
