Team in Florida captures huge python using tracking devices

MIAMI: Researchers in Florida using a new approach to combating a destructive invasion by enormous pythons have captured one of the biggest ever, a 5.2 metre specimen large enough to eat a deer.

The female snake is longer than a one- story building is high, and weighs 64 kilogrammes.

It is one of the biggest pythons ever caught in southern Florida, according to a post on the Facebook page of the Big Cypress National Preserve.

The researchers found the enormous reptile by using male pythons fitted with radio transmitters, allowing them to track the male and locate breeding females, according to the post.

“The team not only removes the invasive snakes, but collects data for research, develops new removal tools and learns how the pythons are using the preserve,” the park said.

The 17-footer was found to contain 73 developing eggs.

The reptiles have no natural predators in Florida and multiply rapidly, posing “significant threats to native wildlife,” the researchers said.

The Burmese python is considered an invasive species since it first appeared in the area in the 1980s.

With anywhere from 30,000 to 300,000 pythons now in southern Florida, the US Interior Department banned their importation in 2012.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in 2017 held hearings around the state to seek creative ideas for containing the monstrous creatures.

Pythons are not known as being particularly brainy. Since some have choked to death on golf balls they thought were eggs, one man suggested setting out hundreds of fake eggs. — AFP