Pythons and Deer
Currently limited to Florida
Research
Python found eating deer shows they’re going after bigger prey in Florida, study says October 24, 2024 Florida, Charlotte Observer on MSN
... 15-foot Burmese python ... was 115 pounds and the deer was 77 pounds ... according to the newly released study “Big Pythons, Big Gape and Big Prey.” ... They are interested in our native wildlife, which has no perspective on this giant snake being a threat..,
Supersize me: remains of three white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in an invasive Burmese python (Python molurus bivittatus) in Florida SM Boback, RW Snow, T Hsu, SC Peurach, CJ Dove… - 2016
... A comparative examination of bone, teeth, and hooves extracted from the fecal contents revealed that this snake consumed three white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). This is the first report of an invasive Burmese python containing the remains of multiple white-tailed deer in its gut. Because the largest snakes native to southern Florida are not capable of consuming even mid-sized mammals, pythons likely represent a novel predatory threat to white-tailed deer in these habitats ...
News
Where's the howl over the pet industry's decimation of Everglades wildlife September 14, 2018 Florida
Sun Sentinel
... A biological catastrophe has indeed devastated the small mammal population in Everglades National Park, along with 94 percent of the white-tailed deer. A seven-year study published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences documented ... created by commercial interests that import, breed and sell Burmese pythons ...
Everglades pythons found with deer, alligators, rats in their systems August 19, 2016 Florida
Sun Sentinel
... An examination of the digestive systems of 104 pythons ... two deer ... More than 1,000 would-be snake-killers participated in areas around Everglades National Park, the heart of the infestation but where hunting is prohibited... estimates range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands ... got here through the exotic pet industry ...
Hunter saves deer – from a massive python in Florida September 4, 2016 New York Daily News
... Wilson saw a huge python — a nonnative invasive species overrunning the Everglades — had wrapped itself around a white-tailed deer ... video ... utters an expletive and starts firing his gun ...
A 14-Foot Burmese Python Had Three Deer in Its Gut December 1, 2016 Florida, Seeker
... "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... they've been wreaking havoc on the Everglades ecosystem ...