Larger animals are seized wherever is convenient, and crushed and strangled in the coils before and during swallowing. They kill smaller animals by biting them on or near the head and suffocating them as they are swallowed. The pythons are mostly ambush hunters, and constrictors.
About two feet long when hatched, Burmese pythons can grow to 20 feet and 200 pounds they are among the largest snakes in the world. The marsh’s weird outdoor quiet is the deep, endlessly patient, laser-focused quiet of these invasive predators. The raccoons and marsh rabbits and opossums and other small, warmblooded animals are gone, or almost gone, because Burmese pythons seem to have eaten them.
This article is a selection from the July/August issue of Smithsonian magazine BuyĪs recently as a century ago, the Everglades covered most of the peninsula south of Lake Okeechobee, which was nearly twice its current size.
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