Burmese pythons are ambush hunters that can grow to be as much as 19 feet long in the wild in the Florida Everglades. Females are five or six feet longer than males and may lay as many as a thousand eggs over a typical life span. Burmese pythons rarely move about, content to do nothing but think snake thoughts until unsuspecting prey wanders by without seeing them lying in wait, camouflaged with shades of black and brown among the dense and rotting ground cover.
A Closer Look at Why Burmese Pythons Are a Florida Headache
Burmese pythons strike the same way poisonous snakes do, sinking sharp teeth into their prey. Then they clamp down hard and hold on. Their curved fangs have no venom because they don’t need it. Holding their prey in their jaws, pythons coil every inch of themselves around the body of what they’ve just captured and squeeze harder each time until it stops squirming.
They use their powerful constrictor muscles to shut down circulation
Each time the prey exhales, the python squeezes tighter. The crushing muscles shut down the flow of blood, preventing oxygen from reaching vital organs. Breathing stops and the lights go out. Experts call it circulatory arrest.
Then these Burmese pythons open their radically-designed jaws incredibly wide
Special ligaments allow them to swallow animals that are five times as large as their own heads. Imagine yourself swallowing a horse without chewing, for example. Burmese pythons use their backward-facing teeth to move their meals deeper into their stomachs as they swallow animals whole, inch by inch. Depending upon the size of the python and the size of the prey, a meal can last weeks before the python needs another. Below is a photo of a Burmese python swallowing a white-tailed deer.
Invasive species are almost always a huge problem
Burmese pythons have eaten more than 90% of the raccoons, opossums, rabbits, wood rats, storks, foxes, and bobcats in the Lower Everglades. Because the snakes are non-native, the small mammals never learned how to detect their presence and avoid being eaten by them.
The popular belief
Most sources that take shortcuts will tell you a story about how the first wild Burmese pythons are the offspring of those that escaped when Hurricane Andrew destroyed a reptile breeding facility back in ’92. Those who study such things agree that incident got the scary headlines of doom, but note there have been wild populations around Miami for at least 20 years before that, most of them intentionally released by their owners.
Typical pet owners are drawn to furry, soft, and cuddly creatures
This is why we have so many dogs and cats and so few turtles and armadillos as pets. Dog and cat owners play with their pets and take them for walks and buy them little Halloween costumes and teach them tricks. They rub their furry little pets’ stomachs, scratch behind their ears, and hug them closely.
Dogs and cats are usually given the run of the house
Burmese python owners keep their their pets in ever-larger cages as they grow to their full adult length of 12 to 18 feet long and as much as 200 pounds. Rarely do you find iguanas running loose or uncaged snakes slithering about someone’s house, because they’re not housebroken or domesticated animals. But you can bet there are some somewhere, possibly in a forlorn trailer park, living among people with stringy hair, wife beaters, and a high tattoo-to-tooth ratio.
Burmese python advice sites list the pros and cons of live vs frozen food
None of the sites says so, but I have to believe there’s a certain type of person that derives gratification from feeding live animals to a snake and watches as its eyes pop out while it’s being crushed. Maybe it’s not so bad if it’s a frozen one you’ve warmed properly. And I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that animals sold as food for constrictors cannot be frozen if they don’t fit inside a standard microwave.
One rule of thumb is to feed pythons warm mammals as wide as they are
The going rate for small pinky mice, fed to fledgling (?) snakes in their first six months, is 50¢ each. The typical Burmese python lives for 20 years and more. It needs to eat half its body weight every two weeks. Chewy sells frozen mice and rats. Just heat and serve, I guess. When I found that frozen rats for big pythons cost as much as $25 each, I saw how easy it is to believe that more than a few python owners took the damn things to the edge of the swamp and turned them loose.
Most TikTok challenges are ordinary enough to be done by anyone
This year, try something more challenging. The 2026 Southeast Florida Python Challenge runs from July 10th-19th and you can sign up right here. Last year, nearly 1,000 hunters showed up, and organizers expect more. The goal is simple:
Kill as many pythons as possible in during those ten days
One of the things that make the task difficult is that python scientists agree it’s beyond rare for a Burmese python to ever be seen in Florida’s Everglades because they’re so well-camouflaged. And you can’t kill em if you can’t find em.
It’s easy to become a snake hunter
All individuals have to do is pass an online safety course and follow a few simple rules to be admitted to one of eight designated hunting grounds in the Florida Everglades. The big one is that pythons must be killed at the place of capture by replacing their oxygen with carbon dioxide, freezing them, decapitating them, or killing them with a captive bolt gun like the one used by Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men.
Contestants bring the dead pythons back to be counted and cataloged
First prize wins $10,000 and there are nine more categories that pay money prizes of $1,000 or more.
Florida’s 2026 West Coast hunt was held in June
Hunters captured and killed 294 Burmese pythons. The largest was a female that was just shy of 17 long and weighed just under 200 pounds.
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My name is David Allan Van Nostrand and I wrote this article, along with more than 500 others on this site alone. Ever since I was a kid with an insatiable curiosity and a knack for learning, I’ve observed, analyzed, and made sense of hundreds of different subjects and topics. Today, in addition to writing, I help organizations solve difficult problems requiring imaginative solutions. What can I take a closer look at for you?
Bonus
Pythons and boa constrictors (including anacondas) are related in that both crush their prey and swallow it whole. They differ in that pythons lay eggs and boa constrictors give birth to live young. They hang out in different spots, too. Boa constrictors are native to the Americas while pythons live in Africa, Asia, and Australia.
The exotic reptile export trade predates Burma’s renaming
It once started in the swamps and jungly areas within their borders where people captured Burmese pythons and sold them to dealers. And then someone found it’s a lot easier to breed them than hunt for nests in wet, green habitats. Captured or cultivated, they get sold to people who buy them as pets.
If you go by the standard definition
Pets are “tamed or domesticated animals kept for companionship or pleasure,” Burmese pythons don’t qualify on the first part but do on the second part among people who like to feed live animals to the giant snakes they keep in their homes. At least until they’re the answer to “Hey, have you seen the cat?”
Today’s Question:
Will any or all of Myanmar’s 135 ethnic groups change the name of the Burmese python?
