Get an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at the quest to rid the Everglades of invasive Burmese pythons—including a record-breaking, 215-pound giant
Researchers have captured the most massive python ever recorded in Florida—or anywhere outside its native range, for that matter—weighing 215 pounds and measuring nearly 18 feet in length.
But the scale was working fine. “That was kind of a line in the sand. We wondered if we’d ever cross 200 pounds,” Bartoszek says. “It raised the bar.” A freeze-dried Burmese python hatchling atop eggs. There are many thousands of these invasive snakes in the greater Everglades ecosystem, and researchers are intensely working to slow their spread and impact on native species.Researcher Ian Bartoszek sifts through dozens of proto-eggs while performing a necropsy on the largest female Burmese python ever discovered in Florida. The team counted 122 of these “follicles,” another record-breaking tally.
Biologist Melinda Schuman with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida holds freeze-dried young snake over the body of the largest female Burmese python found by the center. The Conservancy team alone has removed over 1,000 pythons weighing a total of over 25,000 pounds since 2013, the majority being reproductive females, mostly using the scout snake method.
When I arrived at the research center, the snake was out of the freezer, draped in a U-shape on a huge lab bench occupying most of the room. It takes about 48 hours to thaw out a 215-pound python. And the smell does not improve with time. Easterling pokes his finger through a translucent layer of viscera, exposing clusters of what looks like giant egg yolks—egg follicles—just behind a startlingly lime green gallbladder. Farther down, closer to the tail, is the lumpy gray digestive tract and a single gray disk, wrinkled and looking deflated—an old egg that didn’t get laid in a previous year.
Next is the digestive tract. Easterling runs his hands along the tube for a hint of what’s inside. Bartoszek feels what appears to be the front part of a hoof. Findley sprays an optimistically small amount of room freshener. “These pythons have the ability to totally alter the ecosystem, and I would say they probably already have,” Hart says.
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