The Burmese pythons have such large gapes because their lower jawbones are not fused at the front, and their skin is especially elastic.
Watching an invasive apex predator swallow a full-sized deer in front of them is something that a group of biologists in South Florida will never forget.
A new study conducted from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida revealed that Burmese pythons are capable of consuming larger prey than scientists realized.
But just how large of an animal are we talking? Try ingesting a 77-pound white-tailed deer.
That's what one of three female Burmese pythons did when the scientists were observing them for the study, which was published in the Journal of Reptiles & Amphibians this week.
The data collected proved these invasive snakes have a bigger gape than the prior largest diameter recorded, up from 8.7 inches in prior studies to 10.2 inches in the new one.
The measurements equate to a circumference of 32 inches.
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The pythons' wide jaws and elastic skin allow them to consume prey six times larger than other snake species, the conservancy said.
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“This means that more animals are on the menu,” the conservancy said in a press release.
Biologists Ian Bartoszek and Ian Easterling, in collaboration with Dr. Bruce Jayne from the Department of Biological Science at the University of Cincinnati, measured the maximum gape for the study.
They worked with three Burmese python — the largest measuring at 19 feet long, with two other large snakes at 15 and 17 feet.
“These snakes resemble overachievers by sometimes testing the limits of what their anatomy allows rather than being slackers that eat only ‘snack size’ prey,” Jayne said.
The deer that was taken down by the python in the study was discovered discovered to be 66.9% of the snake’s mass.
Nearly 770 pythons have been removed by the conservancy’s team over the last dozen years. Jayne said that if each of the snakes ate one deer as big as they can swallow, it would come out to close to 13,000 pounds of deer.
“Watching an invasive apex predator swallow a full-sized deer in front of you is something that you will never forget,” Bartoszek said. "The impact the Burmese python is having on native wildlife cannot be denied. This is a wildlife issue of our time for the Greater Everglades ecosystem.”
More than 120 snakes have being radio-tagged and tracked so the conservancy can better understand the species.
It has removed more than 36,000 pounds of python from southwest Florida as of October 2024.
