Biggest Burmese python found in Florida
NEW YORK. August 16. KAZINFORM Florida has a new attraction-a 17.7-foot-long (5.4-meter-long) Burmese python, the biggest snake ever found in the southeastern U.S. state, scientists say.
What's more, a necropsy on the euthanized python revealed she was carrying 87 eggs-also a state record for the species, a University of Florida team announced Monday.
Captured in Everglades National Park, the "monstrous" constrictor will eventually be displayed at the Florida Museum of Natural History, according to the university.
The Everglades is home to a growing population of the invasive Southeast Asian pythons, many of which have either escaped into or been dumped into the wild.
Sometimes adopted as a pet, the Burmese python is one of nine species of constrictor snakes-and about a million individual constrictors-that have been imported into the United States over the past 30 years, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Burmese python finding Florida "ideal"
Florida's previous biggest-snake record-holder was a 16.8-foot-long (5.12-meter-long) Burmese python. Finding a bigger one "is a great indication that conditions are really perfect for them," said J.D. Willson, a biologist and snake expert at the University of Arkansas.
Burmese pythons, he said, grow biggest where there's plentiful food-in captivity, they can reach lengths of up to 20 feet (6 meters).
A Burmese python as big as the new titleholder "should be able to eat any native animal in South Florida"-even Florida panthers, Willson said. And in fact, recent study showed that Burmese pythons are preying on a wide range of native species, some of which happen to be in decline.
Another reason bigger is better: Large snakes retain heat better. That may explain how heftier pythons-though adapted to steamy environments-manage to survive the occasional winter freeze in Florida, he added, Kazinform quotes National Geographic.
The number of eggs the recently caught female was carrying is another sign that the snake was a healthy animal, and that Florida's "environmental conditions are ideal" for Burmese pythons, said Whit Gibbons, a professor emeritus of ecology and head of outreach for the Savannah River Ecology Lab at the University of Georgia.