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Tura
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 29 Oct 2003
Posts: 4866
Location: Raleigh, NC
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 Posted: 10/20/05 - 11:25 Post subject: Gator/Python stories in the news again
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Chomp Chomp Chomp...!
a_deepwater_crocodile takes a bite of snake crunchies.
Newb_06 shouts: "Hay, any1 seen Lockjaw anywhere???"
| Quote: | Scientists brace for snake invasion
BY CURTIS MORGAN
cmorgan@herald.com
The giant snakes suddenly seem hungry, gulping a gator, a turkey and poor Frances the cat. As the body count creeps up, so does python paranoia.
Such uneasiness may not be totally irrational.
Back home in Burma and Thailand, pythons live comfortably amid civilization, slithering in sewers and crushing rodents and other prey. Left unchecked, warns Kenneth Krysko, a herpetologist with the Florida Museum of Natural History, there is little to stop them from cruising canals to crisscross South Florida.
''Certainly, they can now get into anywhere people live,'' Krysko said. ``What will happen then, we don't know for sure. We do know they can eat people's pets. So, kids, get out of the water.''
For now, the notion of snakes as long as SUVs invading the suburbs remains an uncertain fear. But in the Everglades, Burmese pythons have boomed so fast that scientists say it's time to change the focus from studying to killing.
''Everything tells me that this particular species is quite the generalist, quite adaptable,'' said Skip Snow, an Everglades National Park biologist who has tracked the spread of a species first dumped as discarded pets. ``Nothing suggests this snake is going anywhere without some assistance from us.''
By December, researchers plan to tag a handful of pythons with radio-tracking devices to map their slitherings. As early as next year -- if funding comes through -- they hope to start trapping pythons and dispatching them by lethal injection.
The goal, said Snow, will be eradication. It's a daunting challenge.
NUMBER UNKNOWN
Nobody knows how many might be out there. Biologists have only sketchy ideas about where they live and feed. They are still tinkering with traps capable of capturing an elusive creature that grows large and powerful enough to consume an adult alligator -- at least before exploding.
What they know isn't encouraging, either.
Pythons, after decades of releases by irresponsible pet owners, are definitely multiplying in the wild. They've been found in wet and dry areas, in a wide range of sizes and ages, eggs to adults, in sharply increasing numbers.
Krysko said that between 1979 and 2000, only a dozen were documented in the wild of South Florida. In the five years since, 236 have been found.
''They are absolutely everywhere,'' said Krysko, an invasive-species specialist who is part of the research team working on an anti-python plan. ``That's what is so scary.''
And then there's the sobering fact that an established reptile invader has never been wiped out.
In the most ambitious undertaking, the U.S. government has spent several years and $50 million to remove the brown tree snake from the Pacific island of Guam, where it was accidentally introduced decades ago with devastating results.
So far, the campaign has halted the spread off the island and eliminated snakes in small study areas, said Gordon Rodda, a zoologist with the U.S. Geological Survey who coordinates the program.
But the snake remains entrenched on Guam, where its propensity to climb power lines triggers outages and economic havoc. It also eats pets and bites babies, ''which is something mothers aren't really fond of,'' Rodda said.
The tree snake has had a calamitous environmental impact, wiping out birds, bats and lizards that once controlled insects and spread seeds.
''It's probably the worst-case scenario in the sense you took an ocean island that evolved without a snake and you put a snake into it,'' Rodda said.
In the Everglades, pythons could clearly tilt the natural balance, though how much is hard to predict.
Unlike many of the dozens of exotic species that have found niches in suburbia, such as lizards in backyards and birds in fast-food parking lots, the python is thriving in the wildest place in the state, said Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor.
''That's what is different about the Burmese python -- they are right out there in the Everglades clearly interacting with native wildlife,'' he said.
Because there is nothing like them in the Everglades, creatures that have adapted to survive native predators might prove vulnerable to the all-terrain python, he said. Would the nests of rare wood storks, built in the relative safety of treetops, prove easy pickings?
''That's one of the things about pythons that really raises concern,'' Mazzotti said. ``You'll find them in trees, you'll find them in water, you'll find them in mangroves.''
The snakes, necropsies show, are munching everything from rodents to birds to the occasional alligator. That was documented last month with the discovery of a dead 13-foot python with a dead six-foot gator protruding from its body, the apparent result of a snake with eyes bigger than its stomach.
The python is in competition for food with natives such as endangered indigo snakes and alligators. Gators, judging by encounters documented by Snow and researcher Lori Oberhofer, also can consume snakes, but biologists doubt that gators alone can control the spread.
Clearly, pythons give many people the creeps, even in a place where sharks cruise off beaches and gators lurk in canals.
There is something undeniably disturbing about the idea of being strangled and then swallowed whole -- the manner in which pythons consume their victims.
Scientists remain skeptical about gory tales from Southeast Asia, but Mazzotti found at least two documented killings by captive pythons since 1990 -- teenage boys were suffocated as they slept by their pets.
While pythons are capable of killing people, biologists insist that they pose little risk to adults, although they might be more inclined to target a child, given the opportunity.
Researchers also believe snakes that pop up in neighborhoods are typically freed pets more acclimated to people.
''Your odds are probably better of winning the lottery three weeks in a row than getting bit by a python,'' said Joe Wasilewski, a South Miami-Dade County biologist and reptile wrangler.
In the Everglades, Snow believes the biggest danger that pythons pose to humans may be as road hazards, since they favor warm asphalt and grow to the girth of pine logs.
The fate of Frances, the Miami Gardens feline, shows that pet owners have something new to worry about with pythons, but the snakes have a long way to go before approaching native gators.
The state fields 15,000 gator nuisance calls a year, a fair portion having to do with pet attacks. For perspective, consider that the gut of one caught in Pensacola years ago held seven dog collars.
While the recent serial swallowings propelled pythons into the news, scientists have been drawing up a strategy to take out the snakes for two years, since the first gator-snake tussle recorded in the park.
Snow has charted captures and sightings to help narrow down hangouts.
Last year, Oberhofer began training a sweet-faced beagle named Python Pete to sniff out snakes, a method that helped in Guam.
But the Everglades pose more complications than a small, isolated island. Researchers can't simply spread poisoned mice around without killing other things.
They will have to fashion traps that will float and hold large snakes, but not entice gators or other creatures.
They will have to pinpoint places in a sprawling landscape to lure predators that wait in one spot, sometimes for weeks, for a meal to pass by.
A CHALLENGE
''The challenge in Florida is you have a lot of natives you don't want to hurt,'' Rodda said. ``In Guam, there are no native snakes. If we kill every snake on Guam, everybody is as happy as they can be.''
Any effort to control pythons, scientists say, will be doomed if something isn't done to stop the dumping of pets that grow too big and dangerous.
While it's a second-degree misdemeanor to release exotic species in Florida, the state law is rarely enforced. And the importation, breeding and sale of Burmese pythons remain largely unregulated.
Snow and other scientists said state and federal wildlife agencies should reexamine who can own the snakes.
''It's pretty clear to me that the one and only regulation we have, which is that it's against the law to let them loose, is not very effective,'' Snow said. |
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Callaren
RealPoor Sensei
Joined: 03 Dec 2003
Posts: 1598
Location: South Jersey
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Posted: 10/20/05 - 11:43 Post subject:
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You have to sign up for that site.
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Tura
RealPoor Guru
Joined: 29 Oct 2003
Posts: 4866
Location: Raleigh, NC
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Posted: 10/20/05 - 11:45 Post subject:
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| Callaren wrote: | | You have to sign up for that site. |
Yeah I realized that a sec ago. Edited article to txt for you all.
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shinja mayoke
Luke Warm
Joined: 04 Jan 2003
Posts: 434
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Posted: 10/20/05 - 14:43 Post subject:
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That is absolutely asinine. Constrictors for the most part are harmless, for one, for another, the species they depict here can only survive in relatively tropical climates.
Most 'pet trade' snakes would die the first winter they spent in the US, in most climates in the US.
Observe the rattle snake roundups...while I am no fan of poisonous snakes because they really DO pose a threat...is there ANYthing ANYwhere more disturbing with regards to animal treatment?
Its one thing to thin out the population of a dangerous predator, its something else to turn it into a f*****g festival and teach your little children how killing is to be celebrated.
What we REALLY need is Muslim Roundup. Now THAT would be a festival for the WHOLE family.
Edit: My bad, I just found out that reticulated pythons, burmese pythons, and rattlesnakes are in fact Muslims. Disregard.
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