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A huge mound of Burmese pythons entwined in a 7-foot-wide (2.1-meter) mating ball was recently found in the Florida Everglades after conservationists tracked several marked males seeking sex.
The mating ball contained one 4.2 m (14 ft) long female and five males, and two additional males were found near the aggregation. Ian Bartoszekhe told LiveScience in an email.
“It’s an impressive sight to see a large concentration of pythons in the wild,” he said. “They are really beautiful creatures and unfortunately they are here as a by-product of the pet trade.”
Related: Huge Burmese python killed in Florida Everglades was about to lay 60 eggs
Bartoszek and his colleagues headed to the Everglades in mid-February to locate invasive Burmese pythons (Double edged python) at the peak of their reproductive season. He The TNC Monitoring Program has been running since 2013. Through the program, adult male pythons are tagged with a radio transmitter and then released as “scout snakes” to lead researchers to other pythons during the breeding season in early spring. The newly discovered snakes are then removed from the wild, with the primary goal of preventing breeding females from producing more offspring.
Captured pythons are humanely euthanized and necropsied in a laboratory, to collect data on their condition, reproductive potential and intestinal contents, for example. Scout snakes, on the other hand, are left in the wild to guide trackers to more pythons.
To date, the program has led to the removal of 1,300 pythons from public and private lands throughout Southwest Florida.
During the February snake-hunting expedition, the team encountered three mating groups. The first mating ball found included a 4.9 m (16 ft long) female weighing 57 kilograms (125 lb) and two males, with the marked snake hidden near her.
“We didn’t have a bag big enough for the female, so we had to transport her in a kayak and carry her back to the field truck after carrying her out of the woods on our shoulders,” Bartoszek said.
The second mating ball with six snakes was the largest found on the trip, and the team found a “bunch of pythons” intertwined, he added. Additionally, a scout snake was found mating with a 4 m (13 ft) long female.
In total, they captured 11 pythons with a combined weight of more than 500 pounds (227 kg).
“This was a record for us for the total number and weight of snakes collected in a single day over the ten years of the program,” Bartoszek said. The exploring snakes were free to slither for another day.
Burmese pythons are believed to have been introduced to the Everglades. sometime before 1985 when they were released into the wild through the pet trade. Their numbers grew slowly until the 1990s, when they skyrocketed. Since these generalist predators took hold, they have decimated populations of native species, including mammals and birds, thereby disrupting this fragile ecosystem.
“Often during necropsies in our lab it feels like a CSI wildlife crime scene and we often see firsthand how they get so big,” Bartoszek said. “In fact, 2 of the 3 females captured during the aforementioned mating aggregations had remains of white-tailed deer inside them.
“We often see remains of white-tailed deer inside pythons and this should sound an alarm,” he said. “The Burmese python is the invasive animal of our time for Florida’s native wildlife.”
