Re: Pythons in Florida, and how they got there.
Tiffany while I understand you mean well, I think this is just one of those time again where you write about subject you are not very familiar with.
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Originally Posted by
CoolioTiffany
There are thousands of them all over Florida. Why? Well, because of these reasons:
First they are not all over Florida as you seem to believe.
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1- The owner who purchased the snake was NOT informed on this species.
2- The owner did not want to care for a large snake.
3- The snake got out of it's enclosure which was not properly secured.
See below
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Are the Burmese pythons in South Florida pets that were released by irresponsible pet owners?
During the 22-year period from the first sighting in 1979 through 2000, a total of 8 pythons were collected in the area of the park; four others were observed. It’s certainly possible that those few snakes might have been escaped or released pets.
Twelve snakes in 22 years is an average of about one snake every other year.
Considering that the Miami metropolitan area has a population of millions of people, is one of the two main ports of entry in the USA for imported exotic reptiles, has more exotic animal dealers and distributors than any other city, that keeping reptiles is particularly popular in South Florida, and that all of this is right next door to ENP, it certainly seems possible that a half-dozen snakes every decade could have ended up in the wilds of South Florida.
However, from 2001 to the present, more than 900 Burmese pythons have been collected and observed in South Florida. Anyone implying that this increase in the combined 75 years of experience in the snake community, it is our observation that it is a rare event for an exotic snake to be released.
Another reason is that any pet owner who did release a python would release a large snake that had outgrown its circumstances,
not a baby. Older captive-raised snakes generally do not survive long when released. It’s probably because they haven’t learned what is necessary to avoid trouble and they don’t know the area.
Large size is a terrible liability to any snake in the best of cases, and a released large, captive raised snake rarely is able to prosper. It is baby snakes that are the colonizers—and it’s hard to imagine who would purposely release baby snakes. It’s the baby pythons that have the most value to the wholesalers and distributors.
Other evidence that the wild pythons are not descended from captive populations is that Burmese pythons with unusual color and pattern mutations have not been recovered from the wilds of South Florida—all of the pythons have been normal. These days it’s difficult to purchase a captive-bred Burmese python that is not an unusual color morph or heterozygous for some unusual color or pattern mutation. [Watch, now that this has been publicly stated, probably a whole string of albino Burmese pythons will
show up].
A significant consideration is that the genetic study funded by SFWMD demonstrated that the Burmese python population in the Everglades was not descended from the Burmese pythons imported from Vietnam. They did not demonstrate from where the snakes actually came, just that they weren’t from Vietnam.
This is an important finding in the determination of the source of the Florida pythons. Vietnam has been essentially the sole source for imported baby Burmese pythons since 1994. So the Burmese pythons that founded the present population were almost certainly baby Burmese pythons imported before 1994. There just happens to be that exact combination of factors.
Based on all these clues, including the chronology of the recent python population boom in ENP, we propose that the growing population of Burmese pythons is descended from juvenile pythons released into the Everglades along with almost every other surviving animal when Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida in August of 1992.
It was the worst hurricane in the history of an area famous for hurricanes. The storm hit South Florida from the east, the eye went through the middle of ENP, and the hardest winds were north of Florida City blowing to the west with gusts over 150 mph, straight into ENP. Immediately afterwards, South Florida looked as if it had been carpet-bombed.
The entire article (which I encourage you to read) written by Dave Barker can be found here http://vpi.com/sites/vpi.com/files/O...compressed.pdf
Re: Pythons in Florida, and how they got there.
Excellent article Deborah. I was going to mention something about OP's misunderstanding of the situation, but the article does a far better job than I could ever imagine to.
