Burmese pythons appear to be slithering into new territory, extending their range and putting more of South Florida's wildlife at risk of becoming lunch. 
 
 Python hatchlings were discovered for the first time on Key Largo, an ominous development for the island's wildlife, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced Thursday. And last week, a 10-foot python was found on a levee at the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in western Palm Beach County, indicating that the huge constrictor may have staked out territory in the northernmost section of the Everglades. 
 
 The big snakes, which can swim, have been found for years on Key Largo. But the discovery of three hatchlings in August represent the first evidence that they have established a breeding population there. 
 
 "We worry about pythons becoming established in the Keys because there are several at-risk populations of small mammals, like the Key Largo woodrat and the Key Largo cotton mouse, that would be easy prey for Burmese pythons," said Bryan Falk, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. 
 
 The python at the Loxahatchee refuge was discovered by a law enforcement officer driving on a levee at night, just west of West Delray Regional Park. Upon seeing the python, he hit the brakes but ran over it. The snake was still alive, so he killed it with a machete, said Steve Henry, deputy project leader at the refuge. 
 
 CAPTION Call Burmese pythons a plague on the Everglades. But don't call them picky eaters. Call Burmese pythons a plague on the Everglades. But don't call them picky eaters. CAPTION Call Burmese pythons a plague on the Everglades. But don't call them picky eaters. Call Burmese pythons a plague on the Everglades. But don't call them picky eaters. CAPTION The state wildlife service held a training session for the media on how to catch Burmese pythons to bring awareness of the upcoming hunt called the Python Challenge early next year. The state wildlife service held a training session for the media on how to catch Burmese pythons to bring awareness of the upcoming hunt called the Python Challenge early next year. CAPTION Florida's second python challenge will run from January 16 - February 14. Florida's second python challenge will run from January 16 - February 14. CAPTION The event is run by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and starts January 16th. The event is run by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and starts January 16th. CAPTION Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents workers in environmental agencies, has filed a challenge to the hunt. They say opening up National Parks to hunting bad precedent. Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, which represents workers in environmental agencies, has filed a challenge to the hunt. They say opening up National Parks to hunting bad precedent. 
 
 The snake's remains were sent to the University of Florida for analysis. Although three pythons had been found previously on the refuge, they all turned out to be released pets. If analysis of its DNA and stomach contents reveal it to be a wild python, it would be the first such snake found on the refuge, Henry said. 
 
 The main concern would be the refuge's small mammals, such as raccoons, opossums and woodrats, he said. 
 
 "If you look at what happened with the python at Everglades National Park, it started with the small mammals," he said. "Their populations just imploded." 
 
 Two deer, seven alligators, eight opossums, and miscellaneous rats, birds, rabbits, raccoons and squirrels. That’s the haul removed from the intestinal tracts of the pythons caught earlier this year in the state’s Python Challenge public snake hunting competition. 
 
 Native to southern Asia, Burmese pythons established a breeding population in Everglades National Park in the 1990s, as a by-product of the exotic pet business. There are thought to be some combination of released pets and escapees from a breeding facility damaged in Hurricane Andrew. 
 
 No one knows the extent of their South Florida range, said Kristen Sommers, exotic species coordinator for the state wildlife commission. Beyond Everglades National Park, they are likely to be established in other parts of the Everglades, as well as state parks and hunting lands to the west and north of the Everglades, she said. 
 
 It's also unknown how far they could spread, although the relatively cold winters of Central Florida could serve as a rough limit, she said. Even the mild winters of South Florida have in the past held down the populations of non-native species such as iguanas. 
 
 But she said the warm weather of the past few years, with the lack of severe winter cold snaps, has likely allowed pythons and other non-native species to spread. 
 
 dfleshler@sun-sentinel.com, 954-356-4535 ||||| CLOSE A Miami hunter shot a python that was attempting to constrict a deer in Ochopee in the summer of 2016. Submitted video 
 
 Jimmy Wilson shot this python in Ochopee after he found it constricting a deer. (Photo: Jimmy Wilson) 
 
 Miami hunter Jimmy Wilson was hiking through the swampy woods near Ochopee in rural Collier County this summer when he came upon an amazing sight. 
 
 A huge python, a non-native invasive species overrunning the Everglades, had wrapped itself around a white-tailed deer. Both were lying still at his feet as walked up, capturing the scene on cell phone video. 
 
 In the video, Wilson keeps filming as he utters an expletive and starts firing. After the first of several shots, the snake slithers off. Wilson eventually kills it. Wilson then coaxes the deer into running off. Wilson's video doesn't show the deer jumping back to life, but movement can be heard in the brush as Wilson, breathing heavily, happily reports the outcome. 
 
 David Chambers, 33, of Kendall, who said his mother is friends with Wilson, said he got the video from Wilson at a barbecue in Ochopee a couple weeks ago. Wilson shot the video a few months ago, Chambers said. 
 
 "It's one of a kind, it's unique, it's fascinating," Chambers said. 
 
 The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission allows python hunting and has hosted two Python Challenges in recent years where hundreds of registrants compete for cash prizes for capturing the largest and most pythons. 
 
 Chambers said he wanted to share the video to raise awareness about the python problem in South Florida, where the invasive snake is blamed for upsetting the natural balance of the Everglades ecosystem. 
 
 "I think this can shed light on an important issue," he said. 
 
 Read or Share this story: http://nplsne.ws/2bYH27O ||||| A Burmese python in the Everglades with a penchant for venison gulped down three whole deer — one doe and two fawns — before wildlife officials captured and euthanized it, a new study reveals. 
 
 The gustatory feat sets a record: It's the first invasive Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus) caught with three deer in its gut, said study co-lead author Scott Boback, an associate professor of biology at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. 
 
 The python probably attacked and ate the deer at different times over a 90-day period, Boback said. That time span may seem long, but it's actually quite surprising that a snake would eat three enormous meals in a relatively short window, Boback told Live Science. [Photos: This Invasive Python Ate Three Wild Deer] 
 
 "If a python is capable of eating three deer in three months," what else are they eating that we don't know about, he asked. "We don't even know how many of them are out there [in the Everglades]." 
 
 Burmese pythons are native to Southeast Asia, but for reasons still shrouded in mystery, they became established in the Everglades during the 1990s. The snakes can grow to be up to 18 feet (5.5 meters) long in the Everglades (and up to 26 feet, or 8 m, long in Southeast Asia). They use their strong muscles to wrap around prey, obstructing their victims' blood flow until circulation stops. 
 
 It's unclear how the python attacked the deer, but the snake may have hid in the water, waiting for the deer to stop for a drink. That would have left the deer within striking distance of the snake, Boback said. 
 
 The 15.6-foot-long (4.8 m) female snake was almost done digesting its three massive meals when officials caught and euthanized it on June 3, 2013. A necropsy, or animal autopsy, revealed an empty stomach but intestines packed with poop. 
 
 The fecal matter was immense: more than 14 lbs. (6.5 kilograms), or 13 percent of the snake's body mass, Boback said. Study co-researchers Teresa Hsu and Suzanne Peurach, scientists at the Smithsonian Institution, sieved through the excrement and found mats of fur and several undigested hooves, bones and teeth, indicating that the python had eaten white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) — and not just one, Boback said. 
 
 It's no surprise that the fur, hooves and teeth were undigested, as pythons can't break down keratin or enamel, Boback said. However, they can digest bone, which would explain why the researchers found only fragments of bone in the dung, he said. 
 
 After sifting through the snake poop, the researchers found 12 white-tailed deer hooves and 10 dewclaws — the upper part of the deer's toes. The hooves are organized by individual, with the adult on the left side, the large fawn in the middle and the small fawn on the right. Credit: Bob Richards/Moon Express 
 
 The size and shape of the hooves — as well as the presence of a deciduous, or baby, tooth — indicated that the adult doe was at least 1 year old and about 99 lbs. (45 kg), one fawn was about 1 month old and 37 lbs. (17 kg) and the other fawn was about 2 weeks old and 29 lbs. (13 kg), the researchers wrote in the study. [In Images: Hungry Python Eats Porcupine Whole] 
 
 Pythons are ravenous eaters, and they've been wreaking havoc on the Everglades ecosystem, Boback said. The hungry snakes hunt the region's native animals, including birds, mammals and at least one reptile — the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis), the researchers wrote in the study. 
 
 Although other Everglades studies have shown correlations between the presence of pythons and a drop in mammals — such as raccoons, opossums, bobcats and rabbits — the new report shows concrete evidence that pythons can eat more than one deer within a short period of time, Boback said. 
 
 "It just begs the question, 'How often are they eating these things?'" he said. 
 
 The study was published in the November issue of the journal BioInvasions Records. 
 
 Original article on Live Science. ||||| Normally, what a snake eats for breakfast isn’t worth a headline. But this is no normal snake. And this was no normal meal. 
 
 The Burmese python is a massive snake native to Southeast Asia that arrived in South Florida in the 1980s, possibly released into the wild by careless pet owners. There are now as many as 300,000 of these invasive creatures slithering through the state, and they’ve been known to eat alligators, bobcats, rabbits, and birds. 
 
 Now scientists have discovered that Burmese pythons — which can reach 18 feet in length and swallow a bobcat whole — are even more ravenous than they realized. In a new paper in Bioinvasions Records, a team of researchers describe slitting open the intestine of a dead 14-foot python and finding the remains of three different white-tailed deer. The snake appears to have gobbled them up, an adult and two fawns, in just 90 days. 
 
 The implications are disturbing. “If this was just one snake that ate three deer in isolation, that’d be one thing” says Scott Boback, a biologist at Dickinson College and lead author of the study. But the incident comes alongside growing evidence that the Burmese pythons are ravaging native wildlife in South Florida’s Everglades. “When you put that all together, you’ve got to say, okay, something serious is going on here.” 
 
 There’s growing evidence that Burmese pythons are devastating the Everglades 
 
 Something disturbing is definitely happening in Everglades National Park, South Florida’s most famous natural wonder. In a 2012 study, scientists showed that sightings of raccoons, opossums, bobcats, rabbits, foxes, and other mammals in the region have declined more than 80 percent since the mid-1990s. 
 
 These observed declines were strongly correlated with the Burmese python’s known habitat, and the researchers couldn’t find any other plausible explanations for the mammals’ disappearance. Hunting, for instance, has long been banned in the Everglades park. 
 
 Of course, correlation isn’t causation. But in 2015, a team led by Bob McCleery of the University of Florida conducted a follow-up experiment. The researchers took 100 marsh rabbits (which have seen a precipitous decline), tagged them with radio collars, and released some of the rabbits into two sites where pythons were known to exist and the rest into a region where there were no snakes. Lo and behold, the rabbit populations crashed in the python regions — with three-quarters of them eaten by the snakes. 
 
 “All these studies are putting together a story that we just can’t ignore anymore,” says Boback. 
 
 This latest discovery adds to that picture. There have been isolated reports of pythons consuming deer before. And that 2012 study suggested that white-tailed deer populations have fallen 94 percent in Everglades National Park since pythons became established. Now, for the first time, a python has been found eating multiple deer in a short time period. 
 
 I asked Boback if he knew how the python had managed to catch and eat three deer. “This has been keeping me up at night,” he says. “It’s possible that the deer were all snoozing. But it also could have been an ambush.” 
 
 It’s thought that pythons use their olfactory senses to figure out where mammals tend to travel, and then lie in wait for one to pass. “It drives me crazy to think how a single snake was able to hide,” says Boback, “so that not just one deer but three deer walked within a meter of it — and then how it was able to strike from a low position ... or grab a leg. ... It’s fascinating to figure out.” 
 
 However it happened, the notion that pythons may be gobbling up lots and lots of white-tailed deer is troubling. For one, deer are a major revenue source in South Florida, thanks to the sale of hunting licenses. There are also ecological implications — the elimination of deer could rearrange the region’s ecosystem in unpredictable ways. 
 
 But what’s even more worrisome, says Boback, is that it suggests there’s little limit to what pythons can devour. “They’re eating pretty much every vertebrate in the Everglades,” he says. “They’re basically taking all that diverse biomass and replacing it with python biomass. And we’ve seen this story before.” 
 
 One huge worry is that the Everglades will see a repeat of what happened in Guam 
 
 The nightmare scenario is what happened on the island of Guam. During World War II, heavy ship traffic brought the non-native brown tree snake to the island. There had never been a snake species on that island before, and the local birds had no idea how to evade it. In the decades since, 12 native bird species have gone extinct. 
 
 “That really shows how we’ve underestimated these animals in the past,” Boback says. “It took literally 20 years for scientists to admit that the brown tree snake was established and was causing population declines of these birds.” 
 
 Eventually, officials did figure out how to deal with the brown tree snake in Guam. They devised clever traps, baited with live mice, that the snakes could squirm into but couldn’t easily escape. More recently, people have injected dead mice with acetaminophen (Tylenol) — which is deadly to snakes — and fired the mice out of a helicopter into trees to bait and kill the snakes. (Yes, really.) Once an area is cleared of snakes, they can reintroduce bird species. 
 
 The problem is that these strategies won’t work easily in the Everglades. For one, the region has all sorts of other native snakes besides the python that are already endangered — it’s tough to devise a trap that only kills pythons without wiping out a lot of other wildlife. 
 
 So at the moment, South Florida is struggling to figure out how to respond. The state has held hunting contests in some years to raise awareness, but people usually manage to kill a few dozen snakes or so — barely a dent in the population. Meanwhile, areas at the edge of the python’s habitat like the Florida Keys have had some success in fending off invasions with rapid response teams: Locals are encouraged to report python sightings, and a team immediately comes in to take care of it. 
 
 The biggest challenge, however, is that Everglades National Park is so vast, stretching hundreds of miles across, and the pythons can easily hide in the park’s endless sea of grass. The snakes are rarely ever spotted unless they happen to cross over roads. “Roads are really the only place we can reliably detect them,” says Boback. 
 
 No one’s quite sure where these Burmese pythons are going next 
 
 What we do know is that the pythons are extraordinarily efficient predators. Boback notes that the pythons convert about 80 percent of the food they consume into biomass — that is, into either growing bigger or producing babies. For mammals, by contrast, that efficiency is usually around 20 percent. That simple formula helps explain why pythons will continue to dominate. 
 
 They’re also incredibly well-suited to the warm climate of South Florida. And one big question is whether they might eventually travel north of Lake Okeechobee, which sits in the middle of the state, as the planet warms. 
 
 This turns out to be incredibly contentious. Some early studies looked at climate conditions in the snake’s current habitat, projected how climates in other states might change with global warming, and suggested that Burmese pythons could eventually establish themselves as far north as New Jersey. Other studies argued that these early studies missed important factors — like sharp swings in weather that could limit their range. (Among herpetologists who study the python, Boback says, this debate can quickly degenerate into angry shouting at conferences.) 
 
 So there’s a lot more to figure out here: how the snakes reproduce, where they’re likely to go next, and, most importantly, how to stop them. 
 
 “Mostly,” says Boback, “I think we need to start taking these snakes more seriously. We tend to be biased as humans — our imagination only takes us so far as to what these snakes can do. And if we continue to underestimate them, that will get us in trouble.” 
 
 Further reading:
– Wildlife officials in Florida have known for a while that Burmese pythons have been eating their way through the Everglades, but the study of one particular snake has surprised them with the extent of that appetite: The 15-foot female had eaten three white-tailed deer in the 90 days before her capture, reports Live Science. Researchers found the remains of an adult doe and two fawns in the snake's intestines, they report in Bioinvasions Record. (They titled the report "Supersize Me.") That's a relatively short time for a snake to put down three big meals, notes study co-author Scott Boback. "If a python is capable of eating three deer in three months," he marvels, then it clearly raises serious questions about the pythons' impact on the Everglades ecosystem. "We don't even know how many of them are out there." What scientists do know is that ever since the Burmese python first surfaced in the area in the 1980s—the reason is unclear, but careless pet owners are generally blamed—the population numbers of raccoons, rabbits, foxes, and other mammals have plummeted. “All these studies are putting together a story that we just can’t ignore anymore,” Boback tells Vox, which takes a more in-depth look at the implications of the python invasion. As to how a python can take down a deer, this video via Naples News of a Florida hunter rescuing a deer in mid-strangle might provide an idea. And Floridians outside the Everglades will likely be unhappy to hear that the snakes appear to be expanding their territory to the Florida Keys and western Palm Beach County, reports the Orlando Sentinel. (State wildlife officials are fighting back with the "Python Challenge.")