NOPE. Not today.
To most of us here in America, these massive snakes feel like an urban legend.
I mean c’mon, reading about these creatures in school growing up feels like they’re some sort of extraterrestrial being, considering how large these things are, and how they can practically swallow a human whole.
We’ve all seen Anaconda with Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, right?
Still trying to figure out how Cube or JLo didn’t win an Oscar for that one.
But no, these things are real, and are taking over southern Florida.
Video footage has surfaced of a massive Burmese python, an invasive species in the Florida Everglades, that swallowed a five-foot alligator.
Don’t read that casually… A FIVE FOOT LONG ALLIGATOR.
Like… the size of YOU.
In the footage, you see a group of people cutting out the gator from inside the python after it had died, and the python appears to be two times the size of the gator.
For perspective, a python can grow up to 33 feet long.
Nevertheless, it’s still hard to imagine a snake in the process of swallowing an alligator.
The caption to the video reads:
“Necropsy of a Burmese python that swallowed a 5 foot alligator.
The invasive Burmese python is the driving force behind the severe decline in the population of native species in the area surrounding Everglades National Park. In a study conducted in 2012, researchers found that the population of raccoons, bobcats and opossums in this locale had declined by an average of 95.2%.
They also concluded that marsh rabbits, cotton-tail rabbits and foxes in the region had practically disappeared.
These mammals all have one thing in common: they have all been found regularly in the stomachs of burmese pythons removed from Everglades National Park and elsewhere in Florida. They are one of the largest snakes on the planet and are native to the jungles and grassy marshes of southeast asia.
An adult Burmese python can reach lengths of up to 20+ feet, weigh 200 lbs and can sometimes measure roughly the same as a standard sized telephone pole in natural circumference. To say that Florida’s native predators are severely outgunned when competing with this voracious foreigner would be a light manner of describing things.”
Check it out:
