Written by: Bai Xiaobai, Editor: Xu Dewen
The United States is a paradise for invasive species, not only humans, but many other creatures, including Asian carp, Asian clams, Eurasian wild boar, tumbleweed, etc., once in the United States, it seems to have gained absolute freedom, opening a "crazy" mode of crazy eating, crazy growth, and crazy life, which can be flooded in a very short period of time, which is completely incredible.
After Columbus "discovered" the New World, the poor and religiously persecuted people in Europe began to flee to the United States in large numbers, and soon conquered the local indigenous people and developed rapidly; the invasion of the Eurasian wild boar was due to the introduction of meat and hunting, and the continuous wild hybridization eventually led to flooding; tumbleweed was hidden in the Russian flaxseed and smuggled in, and soon began to block the road in the United States.
There is another species, but it was introduced as a pet by unscrupulous traders, tricking people into buying, raising more and more, growing up and stopping, and finally scared to release it quickly, and finally flooded, and even the tragedy of hanging human consumption occurred.
This animal is the Burmese python, one of the most giant pythons in the world. Some people may find it difficult to understand, what? The Burmese python has been listed as a vulnerable species on the iUCN Red List, and in China it is a nationally protected species, so how can it be widespread in the United States? Is it possible that across the Pacific Ocean, fate is a double heaven of ice and fire?
Burmese pythons are known for their large size, flattened mouth, thick body shape, non-toxic, tan body, brown head with brown arrow-like patterns, and the back is covered with irregular brown cloud-like spots. The study found that burmese pythons still grow slowly after adulthood, never stopping for a lifetime, reaching up to 7 meters in length and weighing up to 182 kilograms, and females are stronger than males. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest Burmese python is 9.75 meters long, equivalent to the height of three floors.
The rugged Burmese python is a carnivorous animal with strong predatory ability and a large appetite. It has been recorded that in just three months, a female python of about 5 meters preyed on an adult deer and two fawns.
Not only that, but burmese pythons also have amazing reproductive ability. The burmese python has a fertility season in early spring, and after a brief spring breeze for male and female pythons, the female will lay 12–36 or more eggs in March or April. In 2019, researchers hunted a large Burmese python in the Florida National Nature Reserve and found 73 developing eggs in its abdomen after dissection.
After the Burmese python lays its eggs, it will cleverly use its body to circle the eggs together, constantly twisting the muscles to create friction, so that the temperature of the eggs is kept several degrees higher than the surrounding environment. But once the young snakes hatch, they immediately change from "loving mothers" to strange snakes, and they no longer listen to them. Fortunately, juvenile snakes are also very intelligent, and they will stay in their eggs until they have completed the first molt before going out to forage for food.
If there is no natural enemy restraint, the Burmese python can act arbitrarily in the habitat, singing and dancing, and raising the heavenly age freely, the male python can live up to about 15 years, and the female can live to more than 25 years old. Crazy eating, crazy growth, crazy life, and crazy life, laid a huge foreshadowing for the flood of Burmese pythons in the United States.
Burmese pythons are native to Asia, throughout South and Southeast Asia, mostly in tropical rainforests, and their snake shadows can also be seen in some places close to water sources, and occasionally on trees.
Burmese pythons have a good body, beautiful markings, easy to keep, especially pure white albino pythons, and the famous golden python, which is very popular in the pet world. In the 1980s, the foreign pet trade in the United States surged, and Miami quickly became home to Burmese pythons. Between 1996 and 2006, Burmese pythons were popular in the pet trade, with more than 90,000 snakes imported to the United States.
But many people simply do not know the habits of Burmese pythons, and unscrupulous traders also avoid talking about it, blindly luring people to buy for the sake of profit. The biggest feature of the Burmese python is that it grows rapidly and eats a large amount, if the food is sufficient, it can grow to 3 meters long within a year, and it will still grow slowly after the age of 4 and will not stop. The most frightening thing is that the Burmese python is very intelligent, familiar with the psychology of the breeder, knowing that as long as he shows a state of hunger, the owner will continue to feed, so he often pretends to be very hungry and constantly asks for food, resulting in rapid growth and even becoming extremely obese.
The Burmese python is a carnivore, and the staple food in the wild is birds and mammals, and the amount of food is amazing. After being fed as a pet, as it grows up, it even needs to be fed with a whole pig or sheep, which often makes the pet keeper feel unbearable, but there is no better way to deal with it, so it is secretly released.
There is also the amazing power of the Burmese python, using strong muscle strength to strangle the prey and eat it, and there was even a famous incident in Florida where a Burmese python sniped an alligator, resulting in 230 pythons being killed. In 2009, a 2.5-meter-long Burmese python escaped from a cage in Sumter County, Florida, slipped into a crib and swallowed a sleeping 2-year-old girl, and was strangled and eaten. In the face of such a serious threat, many owners have also had to banish their Burmese pythons into the wild.
An even more serious disaster occurred in 1992, setting records for the intensity and devastation of hurricanes in the United States, and surviving for 13 years, Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida hard, and a large number of Burmese pythons escaped from human captivity bases, migrated to the Everglades and rapidly multiplied to establish populations.
Under the combined action of a variety of factors, Florida was completely conquered by the Burmese python, and the ecological environment of the Everglades was seriously damaged. Burmese pythons have also begun to move out of Florida, potentially encroaching on one-third of the U.S. inland. A 2012 report noted that foxes and rabbits were no longer seen in python-infested areas of Myanmar, with raccoon populations down 99.3 percent, possums down 98.9 percent, white-tailed deer numbers down 94.1 percent, and birds, coyotes, and rare Florida mountain lions likely also starting to be threatened. Most surprisingly, florida mountain lion populations have so reduced so low that they have to inbreed, causing a host of diseases and reproductive problems. This also led to the year that the United States issued a ban and began to ban the import of Burmese pythons.
Many people may ask, since the Burmese python has become an invasive species due to human introduction, is there no way for humans to control them? Such a huge python, what a delicious protein, where have American foodies gone?
It's not that foodies don't want to eat, it's that Burmese pythons are too cunning and foodies can't do anything about it.
After the Burmese python flood in Florida, people were obligated to start thinking of ways to eliminate pythons and restore a healthy ecological environment to nature. The government has issued a reward of $50 for each Burmese python caught, and a $200 prize for a female Burmese python that hatches eggs.
Under the heavy reward, there will be brave men, and the python hunter profession came into being, and many locals made their fortunes. A burmese professional python hunter named Donna Kalil, who leads her team, has captured more than 500 pythons in recent years and euthanized them for snake flesh, a 4-meter-long python that can cut about 4 to 5 kilograms of meat, Karil said.
However, the Burmese python is amazingly powerful, coupled with its intelligence and good at hiding, hunting can be said to be very difficult, and extremely dangerous, often resulting in injuries to hunters.
In 2013, Florida held a month-long python challenge that provided a lot of incentives, and after a month, only 68 Burmese pythons were captured; the 2020 Burmese Python Hunting Contest was held again, and more than 750 hunters from 20 states heard the wind and caught 80 pythons in a week.
In the three years since 2017, more than 5,000 Burmese pythons have been captured in the Everglades, but how many Burmese pythons are there in the United States? The rough estimate is more than 300,000. Compared to the rate at which pythons reproduce, hunting to contain python populations does not seem to help at all.
Hope was seen at one point in 2010, when Florida suffered its longest chill since World War II, causing 90 percent of Burmese pythons to freeze to death. However, it was soon discovered that nature's punishment did not stop the burmese python's invasion, but helped them adapt to the cold environment, and soon made a comeback and strengthened their own group. A 2018 article published in the journal Molecular Ecology said that the pythons that survived in 2010 quickly adapted to the environment and passed on hardiness genes to their offspring.
And a later study made foodies even more depressed, and it was difficult to put their mouths down. Because burmese pythons live in swamps all year round, studies have found that their bodies have extremely high levels of toxic metals, and among captured pythons, mercury levels reach more than 100 times the safe dose for humans, so they cannot be eaten at all.
Without natural enemies, there is no hope of hunting, natural disasters cannot be extinguished, and it is poisonous to want to eat, and the American people have fallen into great trouble, can they really only let the Burmese python ravage and become the most dangerous invasive species?
So human beings really have to think deeply, you put a life, you may kill thousands of creatures, or even the extinction of one, two or even many species.