Reptiles
Burmese Python
Python bivittatus · also called Burmese rock python, two-striped python
The Burmese python is one of the giants of the snake world, a constrictor that can outweigh a person several times over. In its Southeast Asian home it is in decline. In the Florida Everglades, where it does not belong, it has quietly rearranged an entire ecosystem.
Overview
Python bivittatus is native to South and Southeast Asia, in wetlands, grassland, and forest. It is commonly 3.5–5 m long, with big females reaching 5.5 m and over 90 kg — among the longest and heaviest snakes. Heat-sensing lip pits let it target warm prey in the dark.
How it kills
It is an ambush constrictor. It seizes prey, throws coils around it, and tightens until blood pressure collapses and the heart stops within minutes — circulatory arrest, not slow crushing. Prey up to the size of a deer or an alligator is swallowed whole.
The Everglades
Established in south Florida since the 1990s from released pets, the population now runs to tens of thousands. In the core Everglades, raccoons, opossums, bobcats, and marsh rabbits have fallen by 90% or more. Florida fights back with removal contests, detector dogs, and radio-tagged “scout” males.
Status
The Burmese python is Vulnerable and declining in its native range — hunted for skins and meat and collected for pets — even as the Florida population grows.
Burmese Python: common questions
How did Burmese pythons get into the Everglades?
Through the pet trade. Burmese pythons were imported into the United States in large numbers from the 1970s onward as inexpensive hatchlings, and many owners were unprepared for a snake that reaches five metres. Animals escaped or were deliberately released into south Florida over decades, and the subtropical wetlands turned out to suit them perfectly. A breeding population was confirmed in Everglades National Park in 2000. Damage to a reptile importer's facility during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 is often mentioned as a contributing release event, though the population was probably already building from many small introductions. The species is now established across thousands of square kilometres of south Florida.
What damage have the pythons done?
A great deal, to a food web that evolved with no large snake predator. Surveys comparing mammal sightings before and after the pythons became abundant found that raccoons, opossums, and bobcats had dropped by around 90 percent or more in the heart of the Everglades, and marsh rabbits, cottontails, and foxes had all but vanished from some areas. Wading birds and their eggs are taken, and pythons have been filmed killing and eating American alligators. The loss of mid-sized mammals ripples outward, affecting everything from the animals that ate them to the plants whose seeds they spread and the ticks and diseases they carried.
Are Burmese pythons dangerous to people?
Wild Burmese pythons are not a meaningful threat to humans; they are ambush hunters of mammals and birds and avoid people, and there is no pattern of attacks on the public in Florida. The recorded human deaths from this species have almost all involved captive snakes, typically large pets that were being handled alone, or a child left unsupervised near an enclosure. A five-metre constrictor is genuinely capable of killing an adult, which is the core argument against keeping one, but a person walking in the Everglades is in no danger from them.
Can you eat Everglades pythons?
Florida has encouraged it, and python meat is sold at some events, but there is a serious caveat. Testing has found that south Florida pythons carry high levels of mercury, which accumulates in the Everglades food chain, and state health guidance is to limit or avoid eating them for that reason. The skins are used for leather. The main tool against the population remains targeted removal by contractors and volunteers rather than any commercial harvest, because pythons are cryptic and thinly spread and only a fraction are ever found.