Captured 17-Foot-Long Python Was

About to Have 73 Babies

Wildlife officials have captured a 17-foot-long (5.1 meters) Burmese python and a
mother-to-be in Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve — the longest python ever
found in the preserve, which neighbors the Everglades.

But even though her size and her weight of 140 lbs. (63 kilograms) likely puts her in the
top 10% of the largest wild pythons in Florida, the number of eggs found inside her — 73
in all — is absolutely flooring, said David Penning, an assistant professor of biology at
Missouri Southern State University, who was not involved with the snake's capture.
"I would say that's far above average," Penning told Live Science. "A normal quantity to
expect is probably a couple dozen, maybe 40 or 50. And that would be a good year if
you were trying to breed these animals."

Mothers such as this one are part of the answer, Penning said. Now that it's springtime,
mother snakes are laying eggs. These 4- to 5-inch-long (10 to 13 centimeters) oval
eggs take up so much space inside the mother, that she has to stop eating because she
literally can't fit anything else inside her body, Penning said. Even her organs get
scrunched and pushed out of the way.

"It's impressive," he said. "It's like shoving a bunch of pool balls into a sock, but there's
just more than what seems like [the snake] can fit."

After developing in the mother for about two to three months, the eggs are laid in a
conical pile. Then, the mother stays with her eggs, shivering next to them to keep them
warm, Penning said.

"It's probably one of the reasons they're so effective at being an invasive species,"
Penning said. "If you're an egg, you're pretty defenseless. If you're an egg with a 17-
foot mom hanging out next to you, you're probably a little bit more protected."

Once the eggs hatch, the babies go their separate ways. But, intriguingly, these snakes
tend to find niches and prey that fit their body size; small snakes find habitats with small
prey, and larger snakes find larger prey, including prey that lives in the water.

"They have cordially set aside who and where they'll live and eat," Penning said. "It's
called an ontogenetic shift; as they get bigger, they start to eat bigger things and drop
out the littler things, which means more babies have littler things."
On top of that, Burmese pythons are good at hiding and capturing prey, chowing down
on everything from a field mouse to a deer. Since these snakes began invading Florida,
sightings of rabbits, foxes, raccoons, white-tailed deer and opossums in the Everglades
have dropped by more than 90 percent, a 2011 study in the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences found.

"They have essentially inserted themselves as an apex predator and are consuming
anything that can fit inside their mouth," Penning said.

However, Burmese pythons are listed as vulnerable in their native range of Southeast
Asia, largely because humans have taken to making them into products, such as boots.
"It's become such a problem that their population needs to be monitored, and we need
to increase them, except in Florida, where we're having the opposite problem," Penning
said.

This particular mom snake was found after researchers tagged a male python with a
radio transmitter and followed him in his search for a new mate.

Ali Kamran 9c