A view of the python's mouth
Posted on 09/16/2009 3:30:30 PM PDT by george76
In an case of real life imitating Hollywood, the US scientific community is increasingly concerned that two nonnative python breeds currently slithering free in south Florida could morph into a giant man-eating swamp coil.
The capture of five African rock pythons recently near an Everglades already teeming with the gentler Burmese pythons has scientists worried about so-called "hybrid vigor" – a phenomenon that occurs when interbreeding uncorks volatile recessive genes, passing traits such as aggression onto the offspring. Think Africanized bees.
The two species have interbred in captivity. While Burmese pythons aren't known to eat people in their native habitat, the African rock python, unfortunately, has been known to do just that.
The rock python "is mean right out of the egg, and they don't ever tame down," ...
the looming possibility of "hybrid vigor" between nonnative species means the Everglades are turning into a herpetologist's version of Dr. Frankenstein's lab.
"It's a big petri dish," ... "You keep introducing things and, yeah, you don't know what's going to turn out."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
See, there is a silver lining in every storm cloud.
Hybrid men beware!
Why don’t they put a bounty on the damn snakes and get a bunch of hunters and kill every one of them.
Let’s face them off with a pack of starved pitbulls on PPV.
Anything to get Baraq off the air......
Isn't that one facet of Obamacare?
Similar to fire ants, killer bees and kudzu, the “research” will continue until the problem is beyond repair. Kill the sumbitches and study via necropsy.
“Why don’t they put a bounty on the damn snakes and get a bunch of hunters and kill every one of them.”
Environmental impact studies alone would take years...hehehe
...In a way, it’s sad. People casting away pets, that shouldn’t have had them at all. Snakes had a bad name before this, now it will get worse. The Florida anaconda menace...
Not true!
If you can talk to them, calmly and without preconditions, and maybe apologize a little they will, of course, become quite friendly.
Florida should legalize the shooting of them from helicopters and small fixed wing aircraft, it’ll take the heat off shooting wolves in Alaska. :)
How about kill them all and then do the study. Or better yet, feed the snakes all the granola eating Hippie tree huggers, then kill them and do the study.
It is too late, they are completely established in Florida. It would be just as easy as exterminating Palmetto Bugs!
“Whadda ya mean I shot up a drainage pipe? The thing looked like a python from the air”
I’ll bet someone’s working on a screenplay as we speak.
LOL!
It’s to be expected that a few honest mistakes will be made.
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