Everglades National Park Has Been Infested With One of World’s Largest Snakes That Don’t Belong There

Raccoons, opossums, bobcats, dogs, marsh rabbits, foxes; a Burmese python will eat anything and everything, even going all the way to gobble up an alligator or a crocodile as if it were a mere insect. Their insatiable appetite and their unstoppable reproduction have earned them the official “gangster status.” They are the silky-skinned assassins that have been invisibly devastating South Florida’s wetlands in the past decade. If their vicious ambush strategies weren’t enough, they have now invaded the entire landscape of South Florida’s Everglades National Park. 

Reptile hunters and park rangers have no idea how to control them, for they are longer than two sedans put side by side, or even a large shipping truck. And as a consequence, these cold-bloodied invasive predators are wreaking destruction, ravaging the ecosystem one sawgrass needle at a time, one gator at a time. The first Burmese pythons came to Florida in the 1970s when Southeast Asian traders deliberately released them to be sold as pets. Unbeknownst to their unruly growth intensity, excited homeowners would buy them for their homes. It wouldn’t take them too long to figure out that the snakes were growing into sizes so unfathomable for their home sizes. When they realized the pythons couldn’t fit inside their home, they would release them into swamps and wetlands.

To make matters worse, South Florida got hit by Hurricane Andrew in 1992. The barrelling Category 5 winds coupled with monstrous storms, the hurricane ripped the roofs of buildings, flattened trees, and destroyed a python breeding center. Hundreds of trapped pythons broke loose. Blame these factors that over the last few decades, 900 Burmese pythons have multiplied to hundreds of thousands of them. And this malicious serpent has slyly taken over the entire Florida, including the Sunshine State. The government today is even extending bounties to snake hunters to trap and euthanize these pythons.

Featuring yellow-brown scales on their velvety flesh, these pythons are native to tropical and humid environments, particularly those found in Southeast Asia and Southern China. “I think they are adapting very quickly here in South Florida. It’s a landscape-scale phenomenon,” one biologist said in a documentary by PBS Terra. The biologists have radio-tagged over 60 pythons in the Everglades. Using antennas attached to their bodies, they track them.

Hillary Dupont is well-versed in the secret language of these serpents. She works in the animal drop center owned by her father. The shop has raised tons of Burmese pythons in the last decade. And though biologists are actively working to understand their biology, the snakes are so elusive, they almost always escape their attention. As National Geographic UK also describes, a Burmese python weighs over 200 pounds and can reach over 20 feet long, becoming one of the “largest snakes in the world.” To grow to this length takes a menu of hundreds of animals. Once released in the wild, they will eat just about everything. A year ago, biologists from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida witnessed a 115-pound python gobbling up a 35-kg white-tailed deer whole.

The trick to their reproductive success seems to stem from their natural camouflage privilege and a charming hunting strategy called “constriction.” After spotting a prey at a distance, a python creeps along with its gaping mouth raised upwards. Before the prey can realize, the snake digs its teeth into the animal’s body. Once the animal is rendered powerless, the snake coils around the animal and keeps on squeezing and squeezing until its oxygen supply runs out, Coyote Peterson explained in a 2015 video. If there is something that biologists are holding on to, to manage this menace is the insight, “To control them, we have got to understand them.”

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