Burmese python
Python bivittatus
— Where the name comes from
Bivittatus means “two-banded”, for the two pale stripes that run from the eyes along the sides of the head. Until 2009 it was considered a subspecies of the Indian python, and the split is recent: many of the animals now living in Florida were imported when the two names were still one.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Squamates
- Habitat
- Marshes, forest, wet grassland, mangroves
- Range
- South-East Asia; introduced to the Florida Everglades
- Size
- 350–500 cm, up to 580 cm; 60–90 kg
- Diet
- Mammals, birds, young alligators
- Lifespan
- 25 years
— Characteristics
- 01
The female coils around the eggs and warms them by shivering her muscles.
- 02
It swims for hours and can stay submerged half an hour.
- 03
It digests bone too: its gut doubles in weight after a meal.
— What sets it apart
In the Everglades it has erased nearly the whole fauna. Arrived with the exotic pet trade and released by owners — in their thousands, some say, after Hurricane Andrew destroyed a reptile warehouse in 1992 — it bred in a swamp with no predators of its own. Night road counts through the park have recorded declines of ninety per cent and more in raccoons, opossums, rabbits and bobcats, and some species have not been seen at all. It is the most severe biological invasion documented in the United States.
