The hunt for the Burmese python in the Florida Everglades is always on and nowadays a new record is set every few months when someone catches the next "big" thing — one that is heavier, longer, or has more interesting contents in its stomach than any previous python.
Naples resident Jake Waleri, who is 22 and an amateur python hunter, caught a 19-footer with some friends earlier this month in the Big Cypress National Preserve. Nineteen feet, exactly. That is several inches longer, but 90 pounds lighter, than any python caught before.
Nineteen feet is three times longer than a king bed. Or half the height of a standard wooden telephone pole. In fact, 19 feet is about the length of an adult male giraffe’s neck.
Impressive, although the length of this snake is less important than the total numbers of this invasive species that have invaded the Everglades. An estimated 250,000 Burmese pythons – a wild guess; nobody knows for sure – would need to be caught to perhaps rid the Everglades of the creatures.
Good luck with that, hunters. Burmese pythons are as at home in South Florida as they are in their native South Asia. Their camouflage is nearly perfect. They move really fast. They’re slippery when wet. And they bite really hard with really big fangs.
After the catch, Waleri and friends took it to the Nature Conservancy of Southwest Florida for an assessment.
"It's awesome to be able to make an impact on South Florida's environment. We love this ecosystem and try to preserve it as much as possible."Naples resident and record-holding python wrangler Jake Waleria
The conservancy’s python experts assessed the snake, which measured 5.8 meters long and 56.7 kilograms, or a full 19 feet and 125 pounds, and confirmed Waleri’s new world record for the longest captured Burmese python.
The experts believe the snake is so long that it might be old enough to be among the first escapees from back in the ‘90s.
“We had a feeling that these snakes get this big and now we have clear evidence,” said Ian Easterling, a Nature Conservancy python researcher. “Her genetic material may prove valuable for an eventual understanding of the founding population of South Florida. “
Easterling is among the scientists at the conservancy who hold a different python record: they caught the heaviest one ever recorded in Florida last summer.
The female python, filled with 122 developing eggs, weighed 215 pounds. That’s about the same weight as an NFL running back.
Apex predator
The Burmese python should not be slithering about in the Florida Everglades, but is.
The pet trade was most likely responsible for first introducing the Burmese python to the Florida Everglades when traders released unsold snakes into the woods, as did people who bought one and the snake’s fast growth and voracious appetite outpaced its owner’s ability or desire to keep up with it.
Even if that were not the case, Hurricane Andrew in 1993 destroyed at least one exotic pet zoo near Miami that housed Burmese pythons, which were never seen again. Other pythons escaped from home cages during the chaos as well.
South Florida’s environment is not equipped to handle the species’ explosive growth in size, in range, and the many effects it has on the delicate ecosystem, even one as massive as the Everglades.
The Burmese python has risen to apex predator within just a few generations.
Its indiscriminate eating habits are wiping out entire swaths of prey such as marsh rabbits and cotton rats while disrupting the recoveries in the population of wading and ground-nesting birds like herons, egrets, and ibises by poaching their eggs and vulnerable nestlings.
Not even alligators are safe from pythons.
A Burmese python is a constrictor that squeezes the life out of its prey. Then the snake is able to dislocate and unhinge its jaws to consume large things. This allows them to engulf and swallow animals that are far larger than the size of their head.
That appears to be the way an 18-foot python was able to swallow the 5-foot-long gator that scientists discovered when performing a necropsy on the big snake.
‘It’s awesome’
Perhaps more impressive than the snake’s length is Waleri’s acrobatics while catching it.
A video of Waleri's record-breaking catch shows him tugging the long python by the tail to keep it up on a roadway as the snake tries to get away. The python, clearly upset at what is occurring to its tail, whips around and lunges at Waleri.
With matching speed, the 22-year-old python hunter grabs the snake with one hand just under its neck. The python opens its mouth wide hoping to sink its long fangs into Waleri, but the man gets his other hand around the snake’s neck and holds tights as the pair roll around on the roadway – and the python starts to coil up on Waleri’s body.
Other hunters pull the snake off Waleri, who is unharmed.
"It's awesome to be able to make an impact on South Florida's environment," he said after the catch in a news release. “We love this ecosystem and try to preserve it as much as possible."
Environmental reporting for WGCU is funded in part by VoLo Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.
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