By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-10-29 20:13:14 | Updated at 2024-10-30 05:34:16
9 hours ago
Open wide!
Florida’s invasive Burmese pythons can swallow native deer and alligators completely, according to a new study – as a jaw-dropping video showed one of the snakes taking down a deer in one gulp.
Scientists with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida recently came upon the 115.2-pound female python clamping down on the 77-pound white-tailed deer while gathering data for a new study published in the journal Reptiles and Amphibians.
The snake stretched its jaw to fit around the deer’s entire torso, the amazing photos and video showed.
“Watching an invasive apex predator swallow a full-sized deer in front of you is something that you will never forget,” biologist Ian Bartoszek said of the discovery.
“The impact the Burmese python is having on native wildlife cannot be denied. This is a wildlife issue of our time for the Greater Everglades ecosystem.”
Previous studies indicated that large Burmese python’s mouth openings – what scientists call their “gape” – could reach up to 8.7 inches, the Conversancy explained.
The snakes are able to open so wide because their lower jawbones are not fused at the front, the scientists said.
Their skin is also extremely elastic and can account for more than half the circumference in the pythons’ maximal gape.
The latest results culled from several big snakes in the Florida Everglades, however, showed that the maximal gape is actually closer to 10.2 inches – or a circumference of 32 inches.
With such large bites, the pythons can consume prey up to six times larger than that of similarly-sized slitherers.
Knowing that the pythons’ mouth allows them to devour larger prey will help scientists to better predict the snakes’ impact on the native environment.
“Besides the large absolute size of the deer that was eaten being impressive, our anatomical measurements indicate this deer was very near the size limit on the prey that could be consumed by this snake,” said University of Cincinnati Professor Bruce Jayne.
“Hence, these snakes resemble overachievers by sometimes testing the limits of what their anatomy allows rather than being slackers that eat only ‘snack size’ prey.”
The Conservancy of Southwest Florida began its efforts to remove the invasive pythons in 2013.
As of October 2024, the team had removed over 36,000 pounds of python from a 150-square-mile area of southwest Florida.
Last month, a hunter won $10,000 for killing 20 pythons during the annual Florida Everglades python hunt.
The competitors removed nearly 200 snakes during the 10-day challenge, which is put on each year by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
