Burmese python swallows a whole deer shattering beliefs about its last limits

A huge Burmese python was seen swallowing a deer whole in Florida's Everglades. The incident challenges the beliefs about the physical limits these invasive snakes have.

Live Science reported that the snake was a female and measured 14.8 feet long and weighed 52 kilogrammes. 

The python was eating a white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) weighing 35 kg, almost 67 per cent of the snake's mass. To fit the deer into its mouth, the python has to stretch its mouth extremely wide. In doing so, it reached 93 per cent of its maximum gape (the width it can open its jaws), according to a study published Aug. 22 in the journal Reptiles & Amphibians.

"It felt like we were literally catching the serial killer in the act and it was intense to observe [in] real time," study author Ian Bartoszek, a wildlife biologist and science coordinator at the conservation organization Conservancy of Southwest Florida, told Live Science.

A male python called Ronin, fitted with a tracking device, led the researchers to the female snake. Bartoszek says that each season Ronin tells them about female snakes in the region which are "humanely removed before they have a chance to lay eggs".

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Bartoszek said, "This was the most intense and impressive sight we have observed in 12 years of tracking pythons in southwestern Florida."

"It was truly primal and felt like a scene that had been playing out for millions of years wherever you have large snakes."

However, he rued the fact that "native wildlife in Florida have not evolved with this apex predator" and the images show the result of that. 

Burmese Pythons have been known to eat deer and alligators. However, catching them in the act is not easy. 

Burmese Pythons have destroyed local ecosystem

Burmese pythons were introduced to the Everglades around the mid to late 20th century. They are an invasive species and were first seen in 1979. They established themselves strongly by the 1990s and feasted on native species, Live Science reported. 

They continued to grow in the absence of any natural predators. Experts estimate the Burmese Pythons are likely to number in hundreds of thousands in Florida. They have destroyed local ecosystems in the past decades and killed several mammal species.

According to the study, the maximum gape of a Burmese python was assumed to be around 8.6 inches (22 centimetres). Upon studying three of them, including the one caught eating a deer, researchers found that they had a maximum gape of 10.2 inches (26 cm).