There are plenty of evil snake movies to make you paranoid about the Burmese pythons that now live in Florida's swamps.
A long, thick snake moves along the ground. The music crescendos to a violent climax and suddenly, the creature attacks.
They've started issuing hunting permits for the snakes, and just last week a 17-foot, 207-pounder was caught in Okeechobee County. Everglades National Park's population is estimated to be between 5,000 and 140,000.
You might be wondering what exactly that means for your next boat trip or birdwatching excursion, so we talked with an expert from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to learn more about them. Don't get too nervous, there hasn't been a documented case of a wild python attacking a human in the United States. Attacks are rare and usually happen when the animals are in captivity.
What do Burmese pythons look like?
The most striking characteristic is their size, says Scott Hardin, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission's exotic species coordinator. The largest python pulled out of Everglades National Park was about 16 feet long and weighed 150 pounds. It was found earlier this year, basking on one of the levies just south of U.S. 41 East.
They have a pyramid shaped head and a series of blotches like puzzle pieces all along the length of the body. The ones out in the Everglades are a brownish-gold color with a dark arrowhead on the top of the head, Hardin says. There are other color varieties that have been bred for the pet industry, including yellow ones they call albinos, but those are usually more expensive and haven't been found in the Everglades.
How do they catch and eat their food?
Pythons are ambush predators. When they get large they don't move that fast, but their brownish gold patchwork skin is great camouflage.
"They will lie in wait and when something comes along they will bite it to hold it in place," Hardin says. "Then they will wrap around it to constrict it and kill it. Then they'll eat it."
Could they attack a human?
"That wouldn't be their first instinct, but they certainly could," Hardin says. "In almost every situation where we've had a real problem it's been a captive python that has either tried to attack its owner or somebody else in the residence. I'm not aware of any wild attacks of pythons in the United States."
They might attack if cornered and put in a complete defensive posture where they couldn't get away, Hardin says, but usually they would just escape.
"They found one in Clearwater and they sent some officers to get it and it just high-tailed away from them — that's mostly what they're going to do," he says.
How common are human attacks by pythons in captivity?
Attacks by Burmese pythons are rare even in captivity. There are about eight confirmed cases of death by constrictors in North America in the last 20 years, Hardin says.
What do they eat in the Everglades?
"They have eaten everything that's on the menu down there," Hardin says. Then he rattles off a list: wading birds, diving birds, rodents including black rats and cotton rats, raccoons, possums.
"That is one of the concerning things, that they are really not choosy about what they eat," he adds. "Because any of the species that we have that are imperiled or perhaps just limited in distribution like the beach mice, they would have no qualms about eating any of those things. They have found a white tailed deer in one of the stomachs, and there was the famous python alligator photo."
Everglades National Park's staff were doing some sampling within the park using a helicopter and they came across the carcass of a dead 14-foot python, he explains. The python had exploded. At some point, there was an alligator in its stomach, and things didn't work and they both died.
Where would you see one in the wild?
The easiest place to spot a Burmese python is along the side of the road near a canal, Hardin says. When the weather is cooler they'll bask on the levies to warm up, or you may see them there during their mating season January through April.
During the summer, you'll see them crossing the road at night.
"There are regular reports of visitors to Everglades National Park of people seeing them on the road when they're going through at night," Hardin adds.
And then there was one case where there was a python in the parking lot that got spooked and crawled up under the hood of a visitor's car and curled up around the engine.
"They didn't know what to do so they drove up around to the headquarters of the park where they had to take something apart ... to remove the snake," Hardin says.
"The ... snake was retreating, it just happened to go to a very inconvenient place. That was about a 6- or 7-foot snake."
Do they have any predators in the Everglades?
"The adults have very few predators," Hardin says. Alligators and crocodiles, where there are crocodiles, will eat them when they're smaller, but when they get to be bigger nothing can touch them.
What are their predators in their native habitat?
"I don't think they have many predators when they get to be 12 or 14 feet in their native habitat either," Hardin says.
Where is their native habitat?
Their native range is from the Indian subcontinent down through Southeast Asia with an outlying population in China. The Burmese python is a sub-species that is common throughout Myanmar and down through Thailand and Vietnam. The Indian python is much rarer and more limited to the Indian subcontinent.
When did they become popular as pets in the United States?
Burmese pythons hit their heyday as pets about 10 years ago, Hardin says.
Since 1990 about 112,000 were imported.
Why do people release them?
In the past, you could buy one for $20 or $25 at a flea market without a license. People bought the Burmese pythons when they were young and didn't realize how big they would grow, Hardin explains. Suddenly their snake is 6- or 8- or 10-feet long and they didn't know what to do about it and they mistakenly thought the best thing to do was to release it and let it live in nature.
Today, you need to buy an annual license for $100 to keep a Burmese python, and once the snake grows to two inches in diameter you have to implant it with a microchip, Hardin says.
Why is releasing the pythons a problem?
It's a nonnative animal reproducing and living in Florida and also a top predator that can cause damage to imperiled species or cause problems for native wildlife that isn't threatened, Hardin says.
"And, there is the small, but not zero, threat of human injury," he adds.
How fast is the population growing and how do they reproduce?
Burmese pythons lay 50 to 100 eggs, and the female remains with the eggs, coiled around them and shivering, if needed, to keep them warm. Females have been found on nests in Florida with about that many eggs, and virtually all of the eggs had viable embryos.
The population in the Everglades seems to be the result of a fairly small number of animals that were released and started a breeding population, Hardin says.
"You see snakes of all sizes out there, from hatchlings to 6-footers and 12-footers, so this has been a number of generations that has built the population to what it is today," he adds. "No one really has a handle on the population size because it is difficult to figure out in the Everglades. But it's too many."