By admin Invasive Burmese pythons are undoubtedly a bane to Florida ecosystems. Since their confirmed presence in Everglades National Park in 2000, their devastating impact on native wildlife has spread across the state as their population continues to grow. It’s too bad that some scientists are urging people to consider adopting a diet high in python meat when Florida officially hosts an annual python hunting competition aimed at helping to cull the reptiles’ numbers. But as experts continue their uphill battle against the snakes, it is becoming clearer how Burmese pythons are so well-positioned to thrive in the Panhandle state – new research shows the snakes are capable of swallowing even larger prey than mathematical models suggest.
Burmese pythons are born from nests containing 50 to 100 eggs and initially measure about two feet in length. However, by the end of their first year of life, they usually double in size. Most adults do not exceed 5 feet in length, but hunters have documented a few individuals with a wingspan of nearly 20 feet and weighing more than 200 pounds each. Their diet includes swallowing whole lynxes, raccoons, foxes and even alligators – made possible by their lower jaws, which are not fused at the front, allowing them to stretch them basically as far as their soft, supple skin. This makes the Burmese python capable of consuming prey six times larger than what other similarly sized snake species can eat. However, according to a study recently published in the journal Reptiles and amphibiansthese gaping maws may expand further than once thought.
University of California professor Bruce Jayne poses with a Burmese python specimen with a gape of 8.7 inches, right, compared to an even larger specimen with a gape of 10.2 inches. Source: Bruce Jayne
“Watching an invasive apex predator swallow a full-sized deer before your eyes is something you will never forget,” Ian Bartoszek, a researcher at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and co-author of the study, said in an Oct. 24 statement.
Working with Bruce Jayne, a professor of biological sciences and co-author of the study at the University of Cincinnati, and Conservancy of Southwest Florida collaborator Ian Easterling, Bartoszek and colleagues recently gained the ability to measure three captured snakes measuring 15, 17 and 19 feet in length. Although previously studied pythons were documented to have a snout gape diameter of up to 8.7 inches, the largest python in the study could extend its mouth gape to 30.2 inches.
“It doesn’t seem like much. Just 18 percent more,” Jayne said Thursday.
However, this means that the overall size of the snake’s mouth increases in conjunction with the larger diameter, say the researchers, who add that this means that a 10.2-inch gape increases its total surface area by 40 percent. In the largest pythons, this meant the circumference of a pair of jeans 32 inches wide. Given that the team documented one snake devouring a 77-pound deer, approximately two-thirds of its total weight, these revisions to potential prey items both verify existing impact estimates and help explain how Burmese pythons cause so much ecological damage in Florida.
(Related: Scientists suggest eating more python.)
“There is no denying the impact the Burmese python has on native wildlife. This is a wildlife problem of our times, affecting the Greater Everglades ecosystem,” Bartoszek emphasized.
Jayne and their team also saw additional implications after examining and extrapolating the scalability factor between mouth opening and skull structures.
“It’s almost certain that we haven’t caught the largest Burmese python in Florida yet,” Jayne said. “It therefore seems very likely that a record python with a gape of 11.8 inches could eat a 50-pound deer.”
A biologist with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida holds a 5-foot Burmese python. Source: Ian Bartoszek / Conservancy of Southwest Florida
According to Thursday’s announcement, Bartoszek’s team has so far removed 770 pythons measuring over 2 meters in length. Scientists said that if each snake ate one baby deer – which they are capable of doing – it would mean a total of about 5,000 pounds of prey removed from their natural ecosystem. And that’s just one meal.
As Florida’s Burmese python population continues to increase, Jayne warns this may be just the “tip of the iceberg.” The team warns that without effective mitigation plans, there is a risk that the snakes – with even larger mouths than previously thought – will eventually enter larger areas of the southeastern United States.