To everyone’s surprise and scare, wildlife conservators recently found 500 pounds of pythons all coiled up together in a Florida forest. The pythons were found last month in Collier County and the pile was one of the biggest to have been found in a single day to date.
The pythons were found in three different breeding aggregations or “mating balls”. All the 11 pythons weighing 500 pounds are Burmese pythons. The mating balls of pythons found on February 21 had one female snake with multiple male snakes, as per the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.
It was a record daily capture for the conservancy, which has been researching and removing snakes from the environment for over 10 years.
500 pounds of Burmese pythons found in Florida
Burmese pythons, as suggested by the name, are native to Southeast Asia and are considered an invasive species in the US. They generally prey on over 72 species of animals in Florida, as per conservancy wildlife biologist Ian Bartoszek.
Burmese pythons are also one of the largest species of snakes in the world.
The species was brought to Florida back in the 1970s through pet trade and ever since became an “established apex predator across the Greater Everglades ecosystem,” according to the conservancy’s website.
“Burmese pythons are thought to be responsible for a 90% decline in native mammal populations across their established range,” the conservancy says.
To deal with deteriorating wildlife conditions in Florida, the conservancy has been working on removing these pythons from the area.
In order to capture them in large quantities, the conservancy uses male snakes that it tags with radio transmitters to lead it to female snakes during the breeding season, Bartoszek said.
Once the conservancy captures the snakes in an effort to suppress the local python population, they are euthanised, and their tissue samples are collected to advance genetic studies.
“It often feels like a ‘CSI’ wildlife crime scene in our lab during necropsies, and we frequently see firsthand how they are getting so large,” Bartoszek said.
“We see the remains of white-tailed deer inside of pythons often. This should sound an alarm.”
The Feb 21 toll of 500 pounds has been the largest since the Conservancy started its project to suppress the local python population. Since its launch, the conservancy has removed more than 1,300 pythons weighing over 35,000 pounds from an area of about 150 square miles in southwestern Florida, Bartoszek said.
(With inputs from agencies)