16-Foot-Long Burmese Python Devours 76-Pound Deer
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South Florida Water Management District/AP Photo
When it came to eating his last meal, a 16-foot-long Burmese python in South Florida did not mess around.
The humongous, slithering snake devoured a 76-pound female deer right before the snake was captured and killed last Thursday in western Miami-Dade County in the Everglades.
Workers from the South Florida Water Management District came across the surprising, and surprisingly large, discovery on Thursday as they were removing non-native plants from a tree island.
Officials from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission captured and killed the python, one of the largest ever found in South Florida, with a shotgun.
The deer was reportedly already dead when the snake consumed it. Autopsy results showed the python had a girth of 44 inches after eating the deer, found still fully intact, inside his belly.
“This is clearly an extreme event,” Skip Snow, a python specialist at Everglades National Park who conducted the autopsy, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel. “It shows you they can eat huge things.”
Commission officials said their decision to kill the snake was necessary in order to help stem the species from spreading further north.
Burmese pythons is one of the many species whose population in the Everglades has grown recently thanks to their release by local residents who once bought them as exotic pets but then set them loose after they grew too big. Many have also escaped from enclosures destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Why do we allow people to buy these snakes if they are releasing them? I think “IF” we allow them buy them, they MUST bring the snake in once a month to be seen and verified OR if it dies bring in the dead body. Don’t let me catch you releasing non-native into the wild around my house.
Posted by: anotherday | October 31, 2011, 11:33 am 11:33 am
Introduction of exotics to the Everglades and elswhere is a BIG problem that is only going to get worse. Whether it is zebra mussels, kudzu, snakeheads, or pythons we are spending millions trying to eradicate these non-native species across the country.
Posted by: Jim | October 31, 2011, 11:47 am 11:47 am
HEAR wha ANOTHERDAY is sayin but TRY n do SAID…..PS..look up ZANESVILLE OHIO..mid oct.2011…EXOTIC animal owner/farmer REleased WILD animal cages n THEN committed suicked…FIFTY animals..lions,bengals,bears,etc.Yikes..WHOLE law enforc.in area chasing said…A MESS…THANKFULLY NO one died…PUT HIS own Mrs.at risk…APPARENTLY HE had BIG $,legal problems…why did NOT place w/zoos to conservanices is beyond me…
Posted by: bob w. | October 31, 2011, 12:51 pm 12:51 pm
ANOTHERDAY says: “… Don’t let me catch you releasing …”
Do you SEE the irony, there?
Posted by: Aaron Ververs | October 31, 2011, 1:23 pm 1:23 pm
Fact of the matter is that a LARGE illegal breeding facility was situated on the edge of the glades. Hurricane Andrew swept the snakes into the glades.
Posted by: Lynn Adams | October 31, 2011, 1:42 pm 1:42 pm
Easy long term solution. Just make it illegal to sell animals like this in the United States. People are too stupid to know what to do with them after they get them.
Posted by: jstate83 | October 31, 2011, 1:50 pm 1:50 pm
Reason to not move to Florida or anywhere else they can survive in the wild.
Posted by: whatever | November 1, 2011, 5:05 am 5:05 am
I say atleast if you have to come in annually to verify. Heck they can tell you were a cow that was born in Canada and the calves of that cow and where they are in the US. Make people responsible for their actions.
Posted by: Andy | November 3, 2011, 2:17 pm 2:17 pm
Ok I’m not an activist or anything but was it necessary to kill it especially if it was “such a find” ? Couldn’t capturing and releasing elsewhere have worked? Even because it was extraordinary why not put it in a zoo. Probably would have gotten larger haha. I don’t know how bad it is in Florida, is why I ask, but there’s got to be a better way right? Why kill at all when you think about it. Deer eat vegetation and to protect it the snakes can grow ginormous and eat the deer. Pretty soon birds will grow to the size of planes then eat the snakes. We’ll shoot the huge birds and have one hell of a thanksgiving !
Posted by: Brandon | December 13, 2011, 3:34 am 3:34 am