Huge invasive pythons kill deer, bobcats, rodents, crows, rats, even crocodiles, whatever happens unknowingly at an impressive distance. This problem is so serious that in some areas the number of mammals has dropped by 90%. But now there is evidence that some animals are fighting back.
Although the largest python in Florida, which has grown to 19 feet, is probably too big for anything other than humans to handle, the baby is a different story.
Recent studies show that juvenile pythons are on the list for some Florida native predators and may fall into several species.
To get clues as to what eats them, biologists look to their native Southeast Asia, where Bengal eagles and wolves are recorded to have killed similar snakes, the Indian stone python.
Here in Florida, baby pythons hatch in early summer and are 17 to 31 inches long when they drift off nests larger than native Florida snakes, according to Ian Bartoszek, a wildlife biologist at the Conservancy of Southwest. Florida. They have an early start on the ecosystem.
To better understand and calculate how many pythons live in Florida, researchers from the US Geological Survey and others, including Bartoszek, operated on pythons with radio labels and tracked them in and around them. Big Cypress Preserve.
Each tag has a death sensor that pings if the snake stops moving for 24 hours. When the researchers heard of the deaths, they immediately went into the wilderness, as did the CSI crew in the swamp to investigate: Are there any predators in the mud, with disturbed vegetation, feathers, bloodstains, and wandering scales? No? Or if the corpse of a snake is there, are there any reports of injuries? How far apart are the cracks, how big are the claws?
What eats them.
Of the 19 hatching snakes that died in the USGS study, researchers were able to explain the causes of 12 deaths, and other animals have interesting clues but do not have enough information to fully confirm what happened. Happens that.
Five snakes fell on the crocodile. How do they know? Crocodiles swallow whole animals, so when they put them on the transmitter, they find well-fed vermin that the transmitter is in their stomach and will move whenever the animal Do. Most gates are 4 to 5 feet long, but one has a stain at 9 feet.
Cottonmouth snake catches three pythons.
Cottonmouths, aka water moccasins, thick, 2 to 4 feet long, and poisonous. Unlike pythons, they are not captives. In any case, they can defeat the light pythons. Like turtles, they swallow whole animals, so researchers found them with a tracker in their abdomen.
A baby python encounters its mate while catching a cotton rat that is overweight. Researchers have found a dead snake with a large lump in its abdomen. Although it can crack and swallow mice, there is obviously fighting. The snake has a deep bite. One beats the stomach and the other can be punctured.
Species endemic in new environments may not be environmentally friendly, USGS biologist Mark Sandfoss wrote in an email. This can lead to potentially fatal behaviors, as in the case of cotton mice. In fact, the snake did not recognize the cotton rat as a dangerous bat, and instead escaped, the snake attacked and was killed.
The researchers hypothesized that the three kills were cat species. They found trackers with footprints nearby from young kittens or wild cats. Another follower vomited a lump of hair near it, a sign of a cat. The third kill, with a tracker and a half-eaten python skeleton, had a cat lane nearby.
Mysterious death interesting clues
The deaths of seven pythons have not been confirmed without sufficient evidence to name the killers. But there are signs that the snake is eaten. One body was left in the mammal path. In two cases, researchers found trackers removing snakes’ bodies and curious places that reported deaths by hawks or owls.
One observer is in a flooded area with owls and perfect birds above. They found another follower hanging seven feet from the ground in the meadow near the hawthorn tree, where the hawks Can see from that area.
In the USGS study, reptiles carried out 72% of python killings, probably due to their overlapping semi-aquatic habitats.
In addition to gators and cottonmouths, the Bartoszeks study documented endangered eastern indigo snakes and black rattlesnakes that ate on juvenile pythons, and some showed American crocodiles doing the same.
Mammal Revenge
Many years of USGS paper catalog of python data indicate that other native mammals develop a habit of eating snakes and thus find desirable baby pythons.
They include some victims of larger pythons, including Everglades mink, cockroaches, cranes, gray foxes and goats. Researchers also found an adult python torn by a bear that was probably defending itself because it did not eat the snake.
It is possible that Florida leopards could kill them as well, and pythons compete with tigers for white-tailed deer.
Dangers for perennial pythons can also fly down from the sky in the form of swallows, saliva, red clerks, hawks, red-tailed monkeys, or walk along the shore from herds of amazing blue peacocks, white vultures, and Wood deer.
Even other invasive animals can get into the activities of baby pythons, including wild boars and fleas that watch over the Nile.
Monitors and Argentine tegus can also raid their nests. Outside of the USGS study, there were some amazing bobcat camera video footage of a baby egg sucker returning to face a giant mammoth, then returning when she went to eat a few eggs.
Although juvenile pythons are small enough to kill these animals, the chances of eating them are short-lived. They can grow particularly fast. Bartoszek sees them up to 7 feet a year and finds a 10-pound python with a white-tailed deer in its belly.
Females typically lay 18 to 84 eggs a year. How many can survive predators? There is not much research, but Bartoszek conducted 28 hatching studies from four nests and found that 28% survived the first year and two snakes, or 7%, survived for 2 years. .
Survivors wreak havoc on Florida ecosystems. Sandfoss writes that an interesting ability, and in this case, the destructive ability of snakes, is to take objects that are larger than their body size. There are many examples of snakes, including pythons, eating overweight food.
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Image Source : www.sun-sentinel.com
