Posted on 05/17/2008 6:57:30 PM PDT by restornu
Giant pythons capable of swallowing a dog and even an alligator are rapidly making south Florida their home, potentially threatening other southeastern states, a study said.
"Pythons are likely to colonize anywhere alligators live, including north Florida, Georgia and Louisiana," said Frank Mazzotti, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences professor, in his two-year study.
The pythons thriving in Florida are mostly Burmese pythons from Myanmar that were brought over as pets and then turned loose in the wild.
From 2002-2005, 201 of the beasts were caught by state authorities, but in the last two years the number has more than doubled to 418, Mazzotti said in his study published on the university Web site.
The largest python caught so far in Florida measured 16.4 feet and weighed 154 pounds.
Mazzotti said the serpents, despite their awesome size, are not poisonous, but are excellent swimmers and able to cover great distances in little time. Some, trapped and released with radio transmitters, swam 37 miles in a few hours.
Highly adaptable, pythons prey on cats, dogs, hares, foxes, squirrels, raccoons and even alligators, allowing them to thrive in a variety of environments.
After populating the Florida Everglades -- a vast marshland -- ,b>where it is estimated they number 30,000, the giant python is now spreading across the rest of the peninsula.
"Females may store sperm, so they can produce fertile clutches for years. And a 100-something pound snake can easily be producing 60, 80 eggs a year," said Mazzotti, adding that the reptile could eventually populate the entire southern United States.
just don’t get on any plane in south florida anytime soon...
Can't be all bad!
How hateful...
Not if you love Cats!
Exactly,get them on the menu and the problem is solved.
OMG! I didn’t know they had teeth, I thought they just squeezed their prey to death and then they ate it. They swallow their prey alive and it dies inside the snake. How absolutely horrible!
I HATE SNAKES! ALL SNAKES!!!!!!!
Let them battle the alligators for dominion of the swamps. Cool but scary story.
Next photo - just the python, with a big lump in the middle.
That's really a good yield. Every so often I make a chicken/macaroni salad. The last two times I've done it, I've weighed the boned, skinned chicken and been surprised to see it come out to only about 33% of the weight of the raw, undressed chicken. Add in the weight of the skin for those of us who like to eat the skin, and the yield's still only a little under 40% of raw weight.
I was thinking about that.
Wife to husband: “Where’s Johnnie? Did you feed the snake like I told you? Have you seen Johnnie?”
This python swallowed a sheep.
Sine you fired the first shot I’ll fire the second.
All you have to do to eliminate the snakes, is tell all my Cajun buddies, there's only a one week season, the limit's one and they taste like Mud Bug's. Just don't be surprised if they violate the bag limit!
AAAIIIIIEEEEE!!!
You may be on to something: Ol' Fat Albert could probably swallow any Burmese python, and that's how we'll get rid of them!
If he does it's just Natural Selection.
“otoh, where would you find a python BIG enough to swallow FAT AL.”
As long as it takes care of the important part, I’m none too concerned if the python’s eyes are bigger than its stomach. ;o)
Maybe, but they are very quite and stealthy.
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