A 22-year-old has found a 5.79-meter-long Burmese python in Florida, the largest ever observed, according to a local association in the American state where the species is considered invasive.
The specimen was found Monday, July 10, 70 km west of Miami in Big Cypress National Reserve during an expedition aimed at stemming the encroachment of these invasive snakes, which are among the largest in the world.
Jake Waleri, 22, posted a video on Instagram of an amateur hunter pulling the python by its tail on the side of the road before subduing it with the help of another man.
The captured animal weighed 120 pounds and was taken to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, an environmental organization that studies Burmese pythons. “We had a feeling these snakes could be this large and now we have evidence of that,” center biologist Ian Easterling said in a statement, calling the size a record.
In 2020, a 5.71 meter long Burmese python was caught in Florida. Introduced from Southeast Asia at the end of the last century, the Burmese python found a perfect breeding ecosystem in the Everglades, a vast subtropical wetland in the south of the peninsula. This constrictor has no natural predators and feeds on other reptiles, birds and mammals such as raccoons.