A baby
snake that is about 18 to 29 inches long and not venomous may seem like
the perfect pet. Many people who buy a baby Burmese python don’t
realize that the snake will be six to nine feet long after only one
year of growth! As the snake gets older, its growth slows down, but
it continues to get longer throughout its life.
Imagine your dad with an adult man standing on
top of his shoulders. Then imagine another man standing on top of the
second man’s shoulders and then another man standing on top of
the third man’s shoulders. If they could do it, they could probably
be in a pretty cool circus act. They would also stand about as tall
as an adult Burmese python is long. That’s a big snake! Even though
it is huge, a Burmese python is both a good climber and a good swimmer.
It likes the water so much it can stay under the surface for up to thirty
minutes without having to take a breath.
The Burmese python eats rodents and other mammals
and sometimes even birds, lizards, and frogs, all of which it swallows
whole. After a big meal, it can go weeks and sometimes months without
food. It doesn’t see well, so it uses its excellent sense of smell
to find its prey. It also has heat-sensing pits along its upper lip
that can help it to locate nearby animals. Once the snake finds its
prey, it bites it to capture it. However, instead of using venom to
kill the animal, the python wraps its body around its prey and squeezes
until the prey can no longer breathe. Snakes that do this are called
constrictors.
Even if a python has been very docile, a hungry
snake that is more than twenty feet long can make the mistake of thinking
that a human would make a tasty meal. People who buy baby Burmese pythons
as pets often later realize that they cannot handle such a huge adult
snake. Zoos will not normally take people’s unwanted pets because
they already have so many animals to take care of. People then make
the mistake of letting the snake out into the wild. Though Burmese pythons
are native to southern Asia, they can now be found in the Florida everglades
because people have released their unwanted pets. Since pythons are
a top predator, there are no animals that eat them. This allows their
population to increase and decreases the number of prey animals available
for native species such as the American alligator. |
