I've seen several articles in the past week discussing a report in PNAS about pythons in south Florida. Excerpts from a StarTribune article:
The study, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that sightings of medium-size mammals are down dramatically -- as much as 99 percent, in some cases -- in areas where pythons and other large, non-native constrictor snakes are known to be lurking...And from the Washington Post:
Tens of thousands of Burmese pythons, native to Southeast Asia, are believed to be living in the Everglades, where they thrive in the warm, humid climate... The National Park Service has counted 1,825 Burmese pythons that have been caught in and around Everglades National Park since 2000...
The researchers found staggering declines in animal sightings: a drop of 99.3 percent among raccoons, 98.9 percent for opossums, 94.1 percent for white-tailed deer and 87.5 percent for bobcats... Although scientists cannot definitively say the pythons are killing off the mammals, the snakes are the prime suspect.
Officials can’t stop invasive pythons and anacondas from marauding in the Everglades, Reed said; they can only hope to contain them. “We’re trying to prevent spread to the Florida Keys and elsewhere north.”.. A female python can lay 100 eggs, though 54 is considered the norm...
Andrew Wyatt, president of the Reptile Keepers, which advocates on behalf of snake importers, dismissed the study. “They play fast and loose with facts and make big jumps to conclusions,” Wyatt said. The authors contradict prior studies showing that mercury in the water has played a role in the deaths of small mammals, he said...
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service predicted that a new generations of Burmese pythons on the edge of their non-native range can adapt and “expand to colder climates.”
And while we're on the subject, a National Geographic story indicates that pythons somehow make use of lipemia to double the size of their hearts:
High levels of fatty acids, or lipids, in the reptiles' blood nearly doubles the sizes of their hearts and other organs after breaking a long fast, experiments show. The organs of pythons, which are infrequent eaters, balloon to speed up digestion after a typically enormous meal, according to study co-author Leslie Leinwand, a molecular biologist at the University of Colorado at Boulder...And to clean out the (non-Monty) python links in my "to blog" folder, a set of FAQs about anacondas that corrected a misperception of mine. I thought they could dislocate their jaws to swallow large food. Not (exactly) true.
"when we looked at [the blood], it was so filled with fat it was opaque—it looked like milk."... The biologists then identified three specific lipids in python blood that increase after a meal. Sure enough, when the scientists injected a live mouse with these three fatty acids, its heart grew.
Perhaps the most amazing among the adaptations for large prey is the head of the snake. Head of the snake is better described as a high tech devise which purpose is to gulp large prey. The two sides of the mandible are join by an elastic ligament (not fused as in other vertebrates) both side of the maxilla re mobile too. The joins on the jaws (the hinge of the mandible so to speak) is a mobile join that allows it to move and stretch beyond what any other vertebrate could. There is often the mistaken impression that the snakes "dislocates" the jaws or "unhinges" it to swallow large prey. Not of this is correct. A dislocation is when a join comes out of the place where it is supposed to be and often is associated with great pain, an injury. Unhinging a jaw is pretty much a dislocation and not what happens on the snake's jaws. If a person, or a vertebrate with a different head morphology were to open the mouth the way snakes do it would have to unhinge it and it would be an extremely painful (incapacitating) injury. However, this is a regular movement on the snake head. Such flexibility does not come without a price. Snakes had to give up the crushing power that most other vertebrates have on their jaws which renders them very vulnerable when they attack a prey.Is this a distinction without a difference? I'm not sure, but I'll take their word for it. You learn something every day.
Top photo from the StarTribune article: A 162-pound python that had eaten a 6-foot alligator. Photo credit Michael R. Rochford, Associated Press
Why can't we eat pythons? Looks like they ought to have quite a bit of meat on them. I ate some tiny snakes in China, and, I'll bet a big ol' python steak would be pretty good.
ReplyDeleteGood idea. I had to Google the question. Found a rather unsettling answer:
Delete"Tissue samples taken from two dozen of the enormous constrictors captured in Everglades National Park turned out to have what National Park Service officials call “extraordinarily high levels of mercury.”
They've been deemed unfit for human consumption. Says something about the Everglades as well...
"Says something about the Everglades as well..."
DeleteTo an extent - they do eat a lot and, as apex predators, these snakes bioaccumulate toxins like mercury which most organisms aren't very good at eliminating.
They're bad in the same way that swordfish, shark, and even tuna can be. (... just don't take the "National Fisheries Institute"'s word for it)
Remember some years ago, when a lot of red-neck dolts thought having a snake as a pet made them interesting, unconventional and possibly intelligent? We always knew they were idiots, didn't we?
ReplyDeleteAnd they can't even kill the snake when it gets too big to keep or feed -- they have to let it loose on the ecosystem. Thanks, redneck morons!
And by the way -- how's your pit bulldog doing? Is it eating the neighborhood kids?
That reptile keepers president has some big, Burmese brass b___S on him to act like these invasive predators aren't a problem.
ReplyDeleteWhy should we be for the deer, rabbits, and bobcats over the snakes? Because the others got there first? I'm not trying to be provocative, I'm just wondering if there is a worry here beyond a sentimental attachment to local critters. These snakes haven't wiped out all the wildlife where they are native, so the reaction seems a little..well, reactionary.
ReplyDeleteThey're called invasive species for a reason. They kill the indigenous wildlife - you know, the ones that are supposed to be there - which totally throws the entire ecosystem out of whack!
Delete"Supposed to be there"? Who decided that? Did the snakes get a vote? :)
DeleteThey vote with their stomachs.
DeleteAn interesting article on the subject - Time to End Invasive-Species Persecution
Deletewon't be long before they move into the suburbs and start in on the little dogs and ankle biters
ReplyDeleteThere's a joke about Florida's recent Republican Primary in there somewhere, but I'm danged if i can find it....
ReplyDeleteCall me a yellow-bellied coward, but there is NO WAY IN HELL you would catch me wading around in a swamp with one of those things on the loose. Haven't you seen the garbage compactor scene in Star Wars?
ReplyDeletehere in the Tampa Bay region there was a python caught in the Palm Harbor tarpon springs area, 8+ foot long. It had escaped TWO years ago from a tarpon Springs "collector" never reported missing either. The point here is the darn thing had survived winters where sustained temp of 30 to 38 degrees were the norm. Had not anyone learned from Hawaii's mongoose mistake? The very idea that importing of any snake is still allowed is reprehensible.
ReplyDelete