Snake hunters capture the largest python ever found in the Florida Everglades – Quartz

Burmese pythons are not native to the Everglades swamps in Florida. As grafts, however, they are very comfortable: they sneak into marshy streams, drink in mild temperatures, and regularly source raccoons, opossums, and cats. Tens of thousands of these huge snakes are now thriving in the region, resulting from ancient pets and escapees from a breeding establishment destroyed by a hurricane in 1992.

Snakes decimate populations of rabbits, foxes and other useful prey, fight with native alligators and breed like wildfire. The problem is serious, but perhaps even more important than what the experts had done. According to a Guardian report, snake hunters this week captured the largest gear ever found in the region: a pregnant woman weighing 140 pounds (63.5 kg) and over 17 feet in length. The snake was carrying 73 eggs, according to a Facebook message from his captors. (Although large, the snake is far from being the largest python ever recorded, a 25-foot leviathan rocking the scale at 350 pounds.)

To reduce the snake population, environmentalists have recently resorted to a new scheme. Instead of killing male snakes, they put them to work, equipping them with radio transmitters. These so-called "Judas snakes" then lead the snake hunters directly to the breeding females. "The Big Cypress Nature Preserve team members wrote an article on Facebook," not only do they eliminate invasive snakes, "but they collect data for research, develop new removal tools, and learn how pythons use the reserve.