Burmese python

Burmese pythons eat animals.

They catch mammals, birds and other animals. After a big meal, they rest for days.

Burmese pythons eat mostly mammals, but also birds, reptiles and frogs. They are more active at night than in the day. A python grabs its prey, coils around it and squeezes, then swallows it whole.

Its jaw bones are joined by stretchy tissue, so its mouth can open around an animal several times wider than its head. Snakes do not eat every day: after a good meal, a python spends days or even weeks resting somewhere warm while it digests.

The IUCN describes a diet of small to large mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians, with mammals preferred, and a mainly nocturnal habit. The Smithsonian notes that domestic fowl and pigs draw pythons to farms.

The jaw bones are linked by tissue that lets them separate, so a python can swallow prey several times wider than its head. The Smithsonian notes that wild snakes do not eat every day; morning basking warms them enough to hunt, and after a successful meal they spend days or weeks staying warm enough to digest it.

Some pet pythons were let go in Florida.

Now many live wild in the Everglades. They eat the animals that live there. People are working hard to find them.

Burmese pythons were once popular pets in the United States. Some escaped or were let go in Florida, and by 2000 scientists confirmed that pythons were breeding in the wild in Everglades National Park. They have now spread across much of southern Florida.

In Florida, pythons are an invasive species: they do not belong there naturally, and they eat many native animals. Scientists have found 76 kinds of animals inside pythons' stomachs, mostly mammals and birds, and even alligators. Park rangers ask everyone: never let unwanted pets loose.

The National Park Service attributes the Everglades population to accidental or intentional release of pets. USGS reports that a breeding population was confirmed in Everglades National Park in 2000 and now occupies much of southern Florida; a 2023 USGS-led synthesis lists 76 prey species from python digestive tracts, mainly mammals and birds plus American alligator and green iguana.

In a 2012 USGS study, night road surveys in the park from 2003 to 2011 recorded 99.3 percent fewer raccoon sightings, 98.9 percent fewer opossums and 87.5 percent fewer bobcats than before 2000, and no rabbits; the authors concluded that the findings suggest python predation caused the declines. USGS states that eradication across the landscape is not possible with existing tools, so the focus is on control, research and prevention.

In Asia, there are fewer Burmese pythons than before.

People catch them for their skins and for food. Some countries now protect them.

Strangely, while Burmese pythons are a problem in Florida, they are in trouble in their real home. The IUCN lists them as vulnerable.

In Asia, huge numbers are caught for food, for their skins, which are made into shoes, belts and other goods, for traditional medicine and for the pet trade. Some forests have been cleared too. They are now very rare in mainland China and Vietnam. Where they are well protected, as in Thailand and Hong Kong, they are still common.

The IUCN listed the species as Vulnerable (assessed 2011, published 2012, errata 2019, flagged as needing an update), estimating a decline of at least 30 percent over ten years across its range, with declines of about 90 percent in mainland China and more than 80 percent in Vietnam. Drivers are harvest for food, skins (for leather and for traditional musical instruments), traditional medicine, snake wine and the pet trade, with habitat loss a lesser factor.

The population trend is decreasing, but the snake remains common in Thailand, where its protection is well enforced, and in Hong Kong, where it is protected. The contrast with Florida is a lesson in how a species can be threatened in one place and invasive in another.