An officer for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and a python contractor recently discovered two nesting areas in Big Cypress National Preserve in South Florida.
As a Mail Online report specified, the FWC announced it successfully raided a python nursery, catching two large females, "23 eggs, and dozens of hatchlings."
Matthew Rubenstein, the office for the commission, and Alex McDufflle, the python contractor, initially snagged a 10-foot female Burmese python while sitting on 23 unhatched eggs and 18 new hatchlings that slithered nearby.
Upon returning to the same location the next evening, McDuffie reported to Rubenstein that he took out a second breeding female that was 17 feet, six inches in length.
An Initiative to Save Native Wildlife
FWC posted on Facebook about the events that took place on Monday and Tuesday, announcing on Thursday that pythons and unmatched eggs were "removed from the sensitive habitat," helping to avoid future adverse effects on the native wildlife.
According to an FWC statement, the team was led t the python nursery last week when McDuffie was capturing and bagging a Burmese python hatchling from the site.
The python appeared to be newly hatched, so they started to search the immediate site for more hatchlings.
2022 Florida Python Challenge
Pythons are native to Southeast Asia, although they have been wreaking havoc in Florida since the 1970s.
The snakes came to the state as pets, although owners had them discarded into the wild, where they started multiplying and growing to massive lengths.
Moreover, the python population has seen a boom recently, prompting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to announce that the 2022 Florida Python Challenge is now open.
In the statement, FWC Executive Director Eric Sutton said, the Florida Python Challenge offers an opportunity for people to participate actively in Everglades conservation by eliminating the Burmese python. These invasive python species are actively damaging the populations of the native wildlife.
Even though this species is all over the Everglades, they are difficult to catch because they live deep within the swamps.
Nevertheless, snake hunters have turned creative to find such sakes; they use males to hunt down females.
Strategy Using 'Scout Snakes'
National Geographic senior writer and editor Douglas Main discussed how the said strategy was used to capture the biggest python ever documented in Florida or anywhere beyond its native range.
The Conservancy of Southwest Florida researchers captured the massive female python that turned out to be 215 pounds heavy and 17.7 feet long.
Main said it is incredible due to the scale involved. It is nearly weightier than most humans. More so, he continued, it is cool as it exhibits the success of this strategy "using scout snakes," particularly male pythons with GPS transmitters.
These males are released, and the snakes lead them to massive reproductive females. The gigantic snake was captured in December, euthanized, and put on ice in a freezer until April.
122 Proto-Eggs Found Inside the Python
Hidden in the body of the giant snake were 122 proto-eggs, the most ever discovered inside a python. However, the eggs had not yet been fertilized.
It had hoof cores and bits of fur in its digestive tract, which researchers said specified its last meal was an adult white-tailed deer.
A report about the recent python nursery raid is shown on Landmarks Joe's YouTube video below:
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