by The largest Burmese python ever seen in Florida has been discovered, lured from its hideout in the Everglades by researchers using another python as bait. National Geographic reports (opens in new tab).
The giant snake was a female measuring nearly 18 feet (5.4 meters) long and weighing 200 pounds (97 kilograms) — 30 pounds more than the next largest python ever found in the state. Most Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) found in Florida are between 6 and 10 feet (1.8 and 3 m) long, although in their native habitats in Southeast Asia the snakes commonly grow to 18 feet (5.4 m) in length and the greatest lengths of 20 Walking distance (6m) or more depending on Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (opens in new tab).
Since being introduced to Florida in the 1970s, the invasive pythons have successfully proliferated in the southern regions of the state, where they prey on many native birds and mammals, and the occasional alligator or domestic dog.
Although larger than most of Florida’s native snake species, Burmese pythons are extremely difficult to spot in the vast swamplands, forests, and subtropical forests of the Everglades and adjacent areas. To reduce these invasive populations by luring reproductive females out of hiding, python trackers from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, a Naples-based organization, implant GPS trackers in male pythons and then release these “scout snakes” into the wild , according to National Geographic.
Related: Watch a python devour an impala whole in this stunning video
“It’s very important to remove large reproductive female pythons from these ecosystems” because they can produce disproportionate numbers of offspring, Sarah Funck, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, told National Geographic.
A 12-foot (3.7 m) scout snake named Dionysus – nicknamed Dion – served as bait for the record-breaking female, which the team caught in December 2021.
At that time, the team noticed that Dion had settled in a specific location near Naples in the western Everglades ecosystem. When they went to check on their scout line, they found him curled up next to a monstrous woman; After an intense wrestling match, the researchers managed to squeeze the giant female into a bag, which they then secured in a tub and transported to their research facility. (Dion, on the other hand, survived the encounter and continued to search for the Conservancy.)
After the female snake was euthanized, the team performed an autopsy on the vigorous python. Inside his body, they found a record 122 egg “follicles” — roughly spherical structures that mature into eggs after fertilization. Inside the snake’s digestive tract, they found pieces of fur, clumps of dissolved bone and a piece of hoof, evidence that the python’s last meal was an adult white-tailed deer.
Based on similar autopsies conducted in the past, scientists have found that Burmese pythons prey on an estimated 24 species of mammals, 47 species of birds, and two species of reptiles in the state of Florida, according to National Geographic.
“These pythons have the ability to completely transform the ecosystem, and I would say they probably already have that,” Kristen Hart, an ecologist with the US Geological Survey Wetland and Aquatic Research Center and a member of the conservancy team, told National Geographic.
Read more about the record-breaking Python at natgeo.com (opens in new tab).
Originally published on Live Science.
