PYTHONS AND HUMANS: HUNTERS, PETS, AND FLORIDA INVASIONS

PYTHONS AND HUMANS

In April 2005, a tourist who parked outside the Krabi Royal Hotel in Krabi, Thailand found the reason he couldn’t get his rented car to start was because a five-meter-long python was wrapped around the engine. Authorities needed more than an hour to extract the snake from the engine. The python was freed and released unharmed into a nearby forest.

Especially in Africa, python meat is widely eaten as bushmeat and python skin and body parts are used in traditional medicine. Many believe that python blood prevents the accumulation of fatty acids, triglycerides and lipids from reaching critically high levels. In Nigeria, the gallbladder and liver of a python are used to treat poison or bites from other snakes. The python head has been used to "appease witches". Many traditional African cultures believe that they can be cursed by witches. In order to reverse spells and bad luck, traditional doctors will prescribe python heads. [Source: Wikipedia]

Python skin has traditionally been worn by African medicine men and healers. South African Zulu traditional healers use python skin in ceremonial regalia. Pythons are viewed by the Zulu tradition to be a sign of power. Healers are seen as all-powerful since they have a wealth of knowledge, as well as accessibility to the ancestors.

Websites and Resources on Snakes: Snake World snakesworld.info ; National Geographic snake pictures National Geographic ; Snake Species List snaketracks.com ; Herpetology Database artedi.nrm.se/nrmherps ; Big Snakes reptileknowledge.com ; Snake Taxonomy at Life is Short but Snakes are Long snakesarelong.blogspot.com; Websites and Resources on Animals: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; BBC Earth bbcearth.com; A-Z-Animals.com a-z-animals.com; Live Science Animals livescience.com; Animal Info animalinfo.org ; World Wildlife Fund (WWF) worldwildlife.org the world’s largest independent conservation body; National Geographic National Geographic ; Endangered Animals (IUCN Red List of Threatened Species) iucnredlist.org

Python Hunters

Pythons are hunted for their meat and skins and killed because they are regarded as danger to humans, especially children, and small animals. In the Sudan and Ivory Coast, pythons are sometimes caught by sticking a small child into a hole or hollowed out tree where the python is living. When the python grabs a hold of the child and tries to swallow it, the hunting team pulls the child out of the hole or tree, and then out of the snake.

In some places python hunters used to stick a heavily greased leg into python's den. After the python seized and swallowed the leg, sometimes up to the thigh, the leg was pulled out the hole. The hunter braced himself in such a way the python — which sometimes reach 20 feet — could not pull him in. When the python was pulled out of the hole its throat was slit and the leg was pulled from and the snake was skinned.

Shivaratri festivities in Yanamalakuduru, Andhra Pradesh, India

In Indonesia Lawrence and Lorne Blair fell in with a group of python hunters who captured the snakes live and sold their skins to Chinese traders. The hunters took the two brothers to small python-infested island where only a year before a 16-year-old girl had been swallowed. The largest snakes are left alone because the quality of the skin begins to deteriorate after the snake is fifteen feet long. [Source: "Ring of Fire" by Lawrence and Lorne Blair, Bantam Books, New York]

The pythons made their lairs in limestone fissures that dotted the island. Pythons have foul-smelling breath and hunters locate promising lairs by cautiously sniffing the limestone fissures. Lights were used to lure them out during the nighttime hunts.

"The hurricane lamp was placed about twenty feet in front and pumped up to maximum brilliance," Blair wrote. "As we watched, a leathery doglike head began extending from the fissure...When it was fully clear of the cave, three of the hunters then simultaneously seized it by head. tail and center and held it straight enough to feed head-first into an open sack held by a forth man. It was only 12 feet long — a baby by local standards,”but it hissed and barked and thrashed and stank until finally converted into a writhing sack of potatoes."

Python Hunters in Cameroon

In the sparsely populated Adamawa Plateau in Cameroon, hunters from the Gbaya ethnic group crawl headfirst into the holes of rock pythons up to 20 feet long, grade them barehanded and pull them out by their heads. Gbaya python hunters begin their hunt by killing a chicken and apply some of its blood to a knife or spear as an offering to ancestors. Gbaya tribesmen believe that pythons were produced by dragons at the beginning of creation. They begin their hunt in the November-to-March dry season by killing a chicken and apply some of its blood to a knife or spear as an offering to ancestors.[Source: National Geographic, May 1997]

To locate the pythons the hunters set fires and burn off the undergrowth that cover an area with python burrows and then look for trails left by the pythons in the ash. With their bodies lubricated by sweat, the hunters crawl into the burrows with burning straw as a torch, being carful they don't crawl into a passageway in which they will get stuck or that they can’t maneuver out in reverse. If the tunnels is too narrow or twisting, the hunters dig vertical holes in an effort to locate the chamber that houses the snake.

python skins in Myanmar

"In the hole we are like soldiers going after the enemy; we always feel in control," one hunter told National Geographic. Inside the snakes' chamber, the hunter holds the burning straw in the snake's face which he believes keeps the python from striking. He then throws a piece of antelope skin over the snakes eyes while grabbing it behind the head. The snakes rarely strike but when they do their teeth can rip open flesh like "like saw blades." During this process they snake remains calm for reason that are still not understood by scientists. A python hunter named Adamou told National Geographic that a hunter has to "prove he was a man and had no fear." His friend Sambo said on his first hunt at the age of 15 his father blocked the exit and would not let him out until he grabbed a snake.

After subduing the python the hunter crawls backwards through the holes pulling the python in a very slow, relaxed manner so the python remains subdued and doesn’t fight back. Once they are out their holes, the pythons begin resisting. They writhe and try to crawl back in their holes or wrap their asphyxiating coils around the hunter. The fights ends when the snake is dispatched with a slight slash to the throat the leaves the snakeskin undamaged.

The hunter then dries the skin, smokes the meat and boils the eggs of their victims. Traders pay up to $60 for the meat and skin of a large python. "If you were to bring this meat to an elder, he would hold your hands and spit on them as a blessing," one hunter told National Geographic. The number of Gbaya python hunters is dwindling as a result of an international ban on the python skin trade and a lack of interest by their the younger generation to learn about hunting from their elders.

Myanmar's 'Snake Princess' Python Removal Service

Lynn Myat of AFP wrote: At four in the morning outside a Yangon monastery, Shwe Lei and her team were wrestling 30 writhing pythons into old rice sacks and loading them into a van. It was just another day in the life of Myanmar's premier snake removal squad, prising pythons and cajoling cobras from dangerous entanglements with the human world before returning them to their natural habitat. Stuffed into the sacks were three months' worth of work, rescued from homes and apartments around Yangon and cared for at the monastery until they are fit for release to the wild. "I love snakes because they are not deceitful," Shwe Lei told AFP at the snake shelter run by the group, a python entwined around her body. "If you acknowledge their nature, they are lovely." [Source: Lynn Myat, AFP, April 27, 2023]

Her mentor Ko Toe Aung, a burly 40-year-old who said he has been hospitalised seven times since he started catching snakes in 2016, was more prosaic. Anyone in the snake-catching game has to be "fast and agile", he said. "Wherever we catch a venomous snake, it is 90/10... It's a 90 percent chance the snake will bite me." Their team — called Shwe Metta, or "Golden Love" in Burmese — has around a dozen members and rescued around 200 snakes in 2022 year from around Yangon. Social media videos of the pair pulling snakes out of sink plugholes and extricating them from roof eaves have earned them the moniker "prince and princess of snakes" from local media.

The team all have day-jobs and rely on donations for everything from their protective gear to petrol to run their purple-colored snake "ambulance". They mostly catch Burmese pythons — non-venomous snakes that typically grow to around five meters (16 feet) long and squeeze their prey of rats and other small mammals to death. Cobras and banded krait also make homes in Yangon's apartments and are a trickier prospect — their venom can be fatal.

Recognizing exactly which kind of stink is another skill a snake-catcher must hone, according to Ko Toe Aung. "We have to be familiar with their smells... to identify the species of snakes before removing them," he said. Cobras smell "rotten", he said. "But the smell of a python is much stronger. Sometimes we even vomit when we bring it into the ambulance."

Through their online videos and growing fame, the Shwe Metta team hope to encourage people to be more compassionate towards the slithering reptiles — especially if one turns up in their house. "In the past people... used to kill snakes whenever they found them," said Shwe Lei. "But they have more knowledge and they know we can release snakes back into the wild. So they call us to capture and remove them."

The rescued snakes are kept under observation in a nearby monastery until there are enough of them to justify a journey into the bush to release them. In late March, the team walked into the sweltering backwoods of the Bago Yoma hills, 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Yangon, on such a journey. Each member carried a python in a bag slung over their shoulder until they reached a suitable spot to release it. A few of the dazed reptiles needed gentle prods to get going, but after weeks in a cage and a five-hour car journey, Shwe Lei sympathised. "Nobody likes the feeling of being locked up," she said after the last one had slithered off — hopefully not to return to the human world for a long time. "I feel happy releasing the snakes... from the point of view of compassion for each other, it is satisfying."

Farming Pythons for Sustainable Meat?

Farmed python has the potential to be one of the most sustainable form of meat because they can survive a long time without food and reproduce rapidly, can even when food is in short supply, according to a study published in Scientific Reports in March 2024. Pythons have an "extreme biology and evolutionary slant toward extreme resource and energy efficiency," Patrick Aust, conservation specialist at nonprofit People for Wildlife and co-author of the paper, told ABC News. "These animals are extremely good converters of food and particularly protein," he said. "Literally, they are specialists and making the most of very little." [Source:Julia Jacobo, ABC News, March 15, 2024] 12:01

Scientists observed 4,600 Burmese and reticulated pythons at two commercial python farms in Thailand and Vietnam. over a 12-month period.Julia Jacobo of ABC News wrote: The pythons were fed on a weekly basis a variety of locally sourced proteins, such as wild-caught rodents and fishmeal, and were regularly measured and weighed. The authors found that both species of python grew rapidly — by up to 46 grams per day — with females seeing higher growth rates than males. Pythons were shown during the study period to survive prolonged periods of disruptions, or extreme weather events, without suffering any ill effect," Aust said, adding that they were at the "whims of the seasons" in southern Vietnam and Cambodia. Other animals that are farmed for their meat take much longer to reproduce than pythons, research has shown. In one year, a mother cow can produce an average of .8 calves, a study published in 2021 in PLOS Biology found. A pig raised for pork could produce 22 to 27 piglets in the same amount of time, according to the paper. However, a female python can produce between 50 and 100 eggs in one year, Aust said.

Reptiles have historically been a popular dish throughout the tropics, and python is already eaten prevalently throughout Southeast Asia, Aust said. The trend probably started organically, as farmers incorporated pythons into their household livestock, Aust said. The field dressing of a python produces "two enormous slabs of white meat very similar to a chicken filet," he said. While Aust and his family regularly eat python meat — often fried with a "nice crispy crunch" — he added that it will take a long time for the Western world to culturally adapt to the thought of eating snakes.

Dr Daniel Natusch, an honorary research fellow at Macquarie University in Sydney, has suggested its meat should be introduced to restaurant menus, adding he himself eats it. “At the risk of repeating a cliché, it tastes a lot like chicken,” he said. “You run the knife along the back of the snake and you almost get a four- meter-long filleted steak. Firm white meat, no bones. I’ve had it barbecued, in curries, as biltong and, yeah, it’s great.” [Source: Albert Tait, The Telegraph, March 16, 2024]

Dr Natusch told The Telegraph the snakes required up to 90 per cent less energy than warm-blooded mammals and can be fed with waste protein that might otherwise be discarded. A well-fed baby python can double in size in a matter of weeks, and reaching up to four meters long after a year. Once fully grown, a large python can go for almost a year without food. “If you don’t feed a chicken for three to five days, it dies,” Dr Natusch said. “This is why they are such an amazing animal for a future where climatic volatility, economic volatility, resource volatility will be increasing. “They are the most efficient and resilient source of protein known to date.” “The bigger farms [in Vietnam and Thailand] feed them sausages, typically,” he said. “They have access to abattoirs and pig farms, so those farms are feeding them on things like chicken heads that are discarded from poultry abattoirs and would otherwise be incinerated.”

According to Popular Science: While there is also some concern from conservationists about commercial snake farming learning to the illegal harvesting of endangered and wild snake populations, Natusch has argued that the opposite is true. It may give local communities a financial incentive. “We also found some farms outsource baby pythons to local villagers, often retired people who make extra income by feeding them on local rodents and scraps, then selling them back to the farm in a year,” said Natusch. [Source: Laura Baisas, Popular Science, March 16, 2024]

Pythons as Pets

Burmese pythons and ball pythons are popular with pet snake owners. They cost only $50 in the 2000s and reached lengths of 3.5 meters (12 feet). Burmese pythons are quite docile in captivity. The Japanese owner of 15 snakes. Including a python, told the Yomiuri Shimbun, “Snakes are easy to keep in apartments because they’re far quieter than cats or dogs.” He said his pet snakes were like family and he spent hours with them wrapped around his wrists like bracelets. He in turn helped the snakes when they had a hard time shedding their skin.

Pythons are popular among exotic dancers and have been bred many times in captivity. The rock musicians Alice Copper had a 2.4-meter-long albino python. Once, after it swallowed a heating pad, the snake had to be rushed to an emergency room for emergency surgery just minutes before a show was to begin. If the surgery had been delayed the snake’s intestines might have ruptured. Britney Spears appeared on the MTV Music Awards with a python draped around her neck.

Albino pythons are sold at pets stores in Tokyo. One pet store owner said most of his snake customers were men in their 20s are early 30s. Snakes in Japan also widely purchased through Internet auctions. In the United States there are breeders who specialize in snakes with rare colors and patterns and sell for them for high prices. In some village in Asia pythons are sold in local markets along with bullock whips. "Look at this godly creature,” one vendor said, "If you feed him he will look after your ancestors."

Problems with Pet Pythons

Burmese python

Cheryl Conway, spokeswoman for the Aurora Animal Care Division, said Burmese pythons do not make good long-term pets because they can grow up to 20 feet long and weigh 200 pounds, requiring at least one person for every 4 feet of snake to handle and support the reptile. But Barbara Huggins, a licensed reptile rescuer, said the issue isn't whether people should be allowed to own them. "The people who own them have to know what they are doing," she said. "There are at least hundreds of people who own these animals and never have had any trouble." [Source: Sheba R. Wheeler, Denver Post, February 11, 2002]

Burmese python owner Jay Barr, 20, of Longmont said a python can be a rewarding, social pet if cared for properly. Barr, who volunteers at Colorado Reptile Rescue, has had his female python for two years since it was an 18-inch hatchling. The snake is more than 10 feet long and weighs about 35 pounds. Burmese pythons are generally docile. They crave regular social interaction and can become alienated, edgy and aggressive when handled if they are kept primarily for display, Barr said.

Mark Berger, 23, of Colorado Springs, works with Colorado Reptile Rescue in that city. He said that in 2001, the city's organization took in 250 snakes, iguanas and other reptiles because people could no longer care for them. "You can socialize a snake. You can't tame a snake. At any time, they can turn on you. Virtually every accident is because of an error on the owner's part," Berger said.

In January 28, 1998, Associated Press reported from Chillicothe, Ohio: “The owner of a 12-foot python wound up in court after the snake apparently turned on a faucet and caused the bathtub to overflow. Police said they charged Keith Washington, 34, with harboring a dangerous animal because they had gotten previous complaints about Gidget, his 95-pound pet. He could get up to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine. On Sunday, Washington left the snake soaking in the tub at his upstairs apartment while he watched the Super Bowl at a neighbor's home. He said Gidget likes to drink and moisten her skin in the tub and often stays there for hours before slithering out. He said she sometimes brushes against the faucet and turns the water on. When the tub overflowed Sunday, the water dripped through the floor, and a downstairs neighbor called police. Washington said Gidget is gentle and often crawls into his lap. "A lot of people have dogs or cats that get out of hand, but no one ever hears of snakes biting or hurting anyone,'' he said. [Source: Associated Press, January 28, 1998]

Pythons Invade the Florida Everglades

In Florida so many pet Burmese pythons have escaped or been set free by their owners that they are now regarded as the largest snake in the United States. They have become quite numerous in the Everglades, where they now breed and consume animals such as otters, squirrels, endangered woodstorks and sparrows. they find there. It its not uncommon for motorist to come across three-meter-long specimens while driving roads through the Everglades. A of 2023 No one in the Everglades or Florida National Park had been killed or seriously injured by a python but a few pet cats and dogs had been eaten outside the the Everglades park.

Pythons were first spotted in the Everglades in the 1970s, when they became popular exotic pets in the United States and some grew so large that their owners released them into the wild. They started to appear in large numbers in the late 1990s. By 2000, scientists had documented multiple generations of pythons living across a relatively large geographic area in the Everglades and Florida’s southern tip and reports the snake were swimming towards the Florida Keys.. In October 2005, Associated Press reported: The “python population that has swelled over the past 20 years...The Asian snakes have thrived in the wet, hot climate. The encroachment of Burmese pythons into the Everglades could threaten an $8 billion restoration project and endanger smaller species, said Frank Mazzotti, a professor of wildlife ecology and conservation for the University of Florida. The realization that pythons were reproducing rapidly and prodigiously and they were threatening native species helped lead to regulations restricting python importation and ownership. But by then, it was too late to stop their spread.

By some estimates there may be as many as 150,000 pythons crawling through the Everglades. The USGS has estimated there anywhere between 5,000 and 100,000 of them in the Everglades. Joe Wasilewski, a wildlife biologist and crocodile tracker, said its unknown how many pythons there are. We need to set traps and do a proper survey," of the snakes, he said. At least 150 were captured in 2004 and 2005.

Pythons found in Florida have measured longer than 4.5 meters (15 feet) and weighed more than 90 kilograms (200 pounds). Even hatchlings can be more than 60 centimeters (two feet) long. In late 2021, a team from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida found the largest Burmese python ever recorded in Florida: a 97.5 kilogram (215-pound) female with 122 eggs inside her. Most Adult Burmese pythons caught in Florida are between two and three meters (6.5 and 10 feet) in length. Other large ones have included a female caught in August 2012, that was 17 feet, 7 inches long and carrying 87 eggs. In May 2023, a 128-lb snake measuring 18 feet, 8 inches long was caught by Jason Leon after he spotted it python poking out of the roadside brush and then killed it with a knife after it started coiling around his leg. [Source: Megan Gannon, LiveScience, May 21, 2013; Patricia Mazzei, New York Times, March 15, 2023

Reasons Behind Florida Python Invasion

No one knows for certain how the invasive pythons entered the Everglades. Many think they are former pets and descendants of former pets. It was first thought the Burmese pythons were first let loose by exotic pet owners in the 1990s. Scientists have also speculated a large number of the snakes escaped in 1992 from pet shops battered by Hurricane Andrew. Burmese pythons are popular and legal pets in the United States. Some escape. Some are released by owners who freak out when their baby snakes quickly mature into giant, dangerous adults. A reproducing snake can have as many as 100 hatchlings, which explains why the snake population has soared.

The problem arises when people buy pets they are not prepared to care for. "People will buy these tiny little snakes and if you do everything right, they're six-feet tall in one year. They lose their appeal, or the owner becomes afraid of it. There's no zoo or attraction that will take it," so they release the snakes into the Everglades.

Tim Padgett wrote in Time: In large part, Floridians have created their own mess. The Sunshine State loves exotic pets, and sales of pythons, most imported from Southeast Asia, reached $10 million in the state in 2008. But too many buyers, after discovering what a large and expensive chore caring for these snakes can be, simply get rid of them. And because there aren't a lot of adopt-a-python agencies, the reptiles are often dumped in the wild. As a result, Florida in 2008 instituted new ownership requirements, such as $100 annual permits, proof of snake-handling skills and implantation of microchips in pythons' hides to keep tabs on the snakes. [Source: Tim Padgett, Time August 10, 2009]

Mazzotti told the Washington Post that the belief that Hurricane Andrew blew them there from exotic pet shops and houses in 1992, or that numerous pet owners released them when they grew too large, is likely a myth. “All it takes is three snakes,” he said, mating and laying an average of 50 eggs, and up to 100 eggs, per year.

Pythons Wiping out Native Everglades Animals

python and alligator

An examination of the digestive systems of 104 pythons killed in 2016 in a public hunting competition turned up the remains of seven alligators, 38 birds and 50 mammals including two deer, 11 hispid cotton rats, eight opossums, seven cotton mice, seven round-tailed muskrats, four marsh rice rats, three raccoons, three rabbits, two eastern gray squirrels and one black rat, according to the report. [Source: David Fleshler, Orlando Sun Sentinel, August 20, 2016]

In January 2012, Reuters reported: “Researchers writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science have found that surging population of Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades appears to be eating its way through many animals native to the sensitive wetlands. The study noted "severe declines" in the population of small and mid-sized native mammals in the 1.5 million-acre national park and linked it to the growing presence of Burmese pythons. [Source: Reuters, January 30, 2012]

The pythons have been what scientists call "an established invasive species" in the Everglades, apex predators that occasionally prey on the American alligator and the Florida panther. The python's impact has been dramatic on the population of smaller mammals, including raccoons, opossums, marsh and cottontail rabbits, foxes and bobcats, which have dropped precipitously in recent years, researchers said. The researchers collected their information by conducting nearly a decade of night-time road surveys inside the park and in similar habitats outside it, where they counted both live animals sightings as well as road kill. They also looked at records of road-killed mammals from previous surveys done by National Park Service rangers in the 1990s, before the pythons were common in the Everglades. In all, the researchers drove nearly 40,000 miles between 2003 and 2011 and conducted more than 300 nights of observations.

In the southern end of the Everglades, where the pythons have been established the longest, researchers said raccoon sightings have dropped 99.3 percent, while sightings of opossum have dropped 98.9 percent and bobcat sightings have fallen 87.5 percent.Researchers did not detect a single rabbit -- dead or alive -- once inside the park during the nine-year study. Nuisance calls involving raccoons used to light up the park service's switchboard, researchers said. Since 2005, not a single park visitor has called to report a nuisance raccoon, according to the study. A number of water birds -- grebes, herons and the federally endangered wood stork -- also appear to be falling to python predation, the researchers said.

Python Tries to Eat Alligator, Explodes

Research indicates that pythons eat alligator about twice as often as the other way around. In October 2005, AP reported: Alligators have clashed with nonnative pythons before in Everglades National Park. But when a 6-foot gator tangled with a 13-foot python recently, the result wasn't pretty. The snake apparently tried to swallow the gator whole — and then exploded. Scientists stumbled upon the gory remains last week. [Source: Associated Press, October 5, 2005]

The species have battled with increasing frequency — scientists have documented four encounters in the last three years. "Encounters like that are almost never seen in the wild. ... And we here are, it's happened for the fourth time," Mazzotti said. In the other cases, the alligator won or the battle was an apparent draw. "They were probably evenly matched in size," Mazzotti said of the latest battle. "If the python got a good grip on the alligator before the alligator got a good grip on him, he could win."

While the gator may have been injured before the battle began — wounds were found on it that apparently were not caused by python bites — Mazzotti believes it was alive when the battle began. And it may have clawed at the python's stomach as the snake tried to digest it, leading to the blow up. The python was found with the gator's hindquarters protruding from its midsection. Its stomach still surrounded the alligator's head, shoulders, and forelimbs. The remains were discovered and photographed Sept. 26 by helicopter pilot and wildlife researcher Michael Barron.

The incident has alerted biologists to new potential dangers from Burmese pythons in the Everglades. "Clearly, if they can kill an alligator they can kill other species," Mazzotti said. "There had been some hope that alligators can control Burmese pythons. ... This indicates to me it's going to be an even draw. Sometimes alligators are going to win and sometimes the python will win. "It means nothing in the Everglades is safe from pythons, a top down predator," Mazzotti said.

Efforts to Battle the Pythons in the Everglades

Efforts to slow the proliferation of Burmese pythons in the Florida Everglades have included paying contractors, training volunteers and holding an annual hunt that has drawn participants from as far as Latvia. According to the New York Times: Once a year, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission holds a python hunt open to the public, challenging people to find and remove as many snakes as they can. Participants must take a training course online or in person about humanely killing pythons using either preferred mechanical methods, like a stun gun, or manual ones, like hunting knives, since the hunt does not allow the use of firearms. Last year’s winner took home $10,000 for hunting down 28 pythons. [Source: Patricia Mazzei, New York Times, March 15, 2023]

Dustin Crum, who has been hunting pythons for a decade, took home $1,500 for capturing the longest snake in the competition, an 11-footer. He won in the same category in 2021 after catching a 15-footer. “We started out doing this stuff as a hobby and just couldn’t believe we could catch giant constrictors like that in the wild,” said Crum, 42, who now hunts pythons full time. The state pays hunters $50 per foot for the first four feet of snake and $25 for each subsequent foot, he said, as well as an hourly rate. Outside of the state-sponsored competition for the public, Crum does use guns to kill the snakes.

By the early 2010s, experts at the U.S. Geological Survey, which has helped do studies in the Everglades, said the odds of eradicating the pythons now that they have established themselves in the park are "very low." But that hasn't stopped people from trying. The National Park Service said that more than 1,800 pythons have been removed from the park and surrounding areas between 2002 and 2012. More than 18,000 were been removed between 2000 and 2022, including 2,500 in 2022, according to the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. As of October 2024, the Conservancy of Southwest Florida has removed more than 36,000 pounds of python from Southwest Florida and 120 have been radio-tagged and tracked to better understand the species.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation (FWC) began authorizing python hunts in 2009. FWC commissioner Ron Bergeron, who led a team trying to eradicate pythons from the Everglades, told Time at that time: His team liked “to sneak onto islands like this one...They know birds and animals take refuge on them." Time reported: He pulls up to the tree-covered hummock, and almost as soon as herpetologists Shawn Heflick and Greg Graziani hop off the airboat armed with snake hooks, they find a 10-foot Burmese python slithering through the mud. Graziani swoops down and grabs the angry serpent's tail while Heflick goes for the other end. After a brief struggle, during which Heflick gets his hand bloodied by a sharp snake tooth, they pull the python's head into their clutches. "It was trying to cool off deep down there in the slime in this heat," says Heflick, lifting the python like a trophy as it coils around his forearm and flashes its forked tongue. "Makes it harder to find them this time of year." When they get back to dry land, the men will kill it. So begins Day One for Florida's first officially designated python posse. [Source: Tim Padgett, Time August 10, 2009]

In July 2009, FWC chairman Rodney Barreto issued the first snake-hunting permits for state lands, and U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar did likewise for Big Cypress National Preserve. (Hunting is banned in Everglades National Park, but Salazar is considering allowing it in this case.) Researchers are even developing a python drone, a small remote-controlled airplane that can detect the constrictors. As of 2009, only reptile experts like Graziani and Heflick had permission to hunt the serpents. (Using firearms against the reptiles was still prohibited.) After the posse euthanized the morning's catch by swiftly severing its brain stem, the men examine its entrails. "She was eating well out there," says Graziani, noting the large fatty deposits and the animal fur in its stool.

Governments have tried imposing stiffer penalties on people who release snakes and held “snake amnesty days” allowing people to turn in their snakes no questions asked. National park ranger Skip Snow has experimented with using a beagle nicknamed Python Pete to track snakes (the dog is kept on a leash so it doesn’t become a python snack. Some game officials and citizens have suggested sending bounty hunters with guns and traps, bow machetes into the park. The Washington Post reported: “Bounty hunters are great at capturing snakes — when they find them, which is rare. Hunters are also known to execute small native snakes, mistaking them for python hatchlings.

Pythons in Florida Moving North But Much About Them Still Unknown

Pythons prefer warmth, but many in the Everglades have managed to survive hard freezes, leading some biologists to worry about their ability to adapt and travel north. Patricia Mazzei wrote in the New York Times: The giant snakes have been making their way north, reaching West Palm Beach and Fort Myers and threatening ever-larger stretches of the ecosystem. That was one of the few definitive conclusions in a comprehensive review of python science published in February 2023 by the U.S. Geological Survey. [Source: Patricia Mazzei, New York Times, March 15, 2023]

Little is known about how long Burmese pythons live in the wild in Florida, how often they reproduce and especially how large the state’s python population has grown, according to the review, which called the state’s python problem “one of the most intractable invasive-species management issues across the globe.” Nor is it known how exactly they travel. The review theorized that South Florida’s extensive network of canals and levees “may facilitate long-distance movement by pythons,” though it suggested that slithering and swimming to points north may take awhile.“One python transited continuously for 58.5 hours and traveled 2.43 kilometers in a single day,” the review said of a snake followed with radio tracking.

Detecting pythons, which like to hide in marshes and thrive in remote habitats, is so challenging that experts do not know how many exist in Florida, though they estimate that there are at least tens of thousands. Melissa Miller of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida is helping lead a large-scale python removal project that also hopes to get a better sense of the snakes’ abundance by putting trackers on more of them and measuring the reproductive output of more females. Another part of the project will use drones to track many tagged pythons at once. Someday, a genetic biocontrol tool might emerge to help suppress the population, she said. “We don’t really have a reliable estimate of how many are out there,” Miller said. “They’re kind of a cautionary tale to not to release pets, to make sure you report invasive species immediately.”

Python breeding season generally extends from November to March or April. The team at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida uses tagged male pythons as “scouts” to lead researchers to females. This season, a VIP — “that’s Very Important Python” — named Jesse led the team to two large females within two weeks.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Animal Diversity Web animaldiversity.org ; National Geographic, Live Science, Natural History magazine, David Attenborough books, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Discover magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, CNN, BBC, Wikipedia, The Guardian, Top Secret Animal Attack Files website and various books and other publications.

Last updated February 2025