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Researcher: One of the things about snakes, and pythons are no different, is that snakes are often hard to find.
And, one of the best ways to find snakes is to try to cover as much ground as you can when snakes are out and when they are active.
And, for most of the year, these snakes are active at night because during the daytime, it is just too hot down here.
So, if we drive the roads at night, we can cover a lot of ground in a relatively short amount of time and increase our probability of finding snakes.
The biggest impact that pythons have is the fact that they are large predators.
And, they can eat a number of animals.
They most frequently eat birds and mammals.
And, they have already been documented to eat species of special concern and endangered species that are species we are concerned about here in south Florida.
And, so the impact on endangered species is a real concern.
But, also just the impact on the ecosystem by them eating common species.
For example, rabbits, raccoons, and possums now appear to be very rare in Everglades National Park.
And, in the 1990s, they were relatively abundant.
And, whether that is due to the pythons or not, we do not know for sure but it appears to be correlated.
And, the impact of those species disappearing from the park or at least having their populations reduced substantially is really unknown at this time.
I have always been interested in amphibians and reptiles, and especially in snakes.
And, so, anytime you have the opportunity to study a really large snake, you know, it is a lot of fun.
Although, this is a real mess down here because of the pythons.
So, the other aspect of that is that this is really interesting just because you rarely get a chance to study or address biological questions related to the introduction of a species...
Such as a python which is a large cold-blooded, or ectothermic, predator that can occur in very high densities.
Most of our large predators occur in relatively low densities, things like panthers and bears.
Alligators are an exception, they occur in relatively high densities in certain places.
But, these snakes have been introduced and their populations have expanded rapidly.
And, they have already become a relatively common snake within Everglades National Park.
One of the things that we noticed just recently is that over the years since 2005 that we have been driving the main park road looking for pythons is that...
We find very few, if any, raccoons, possums, and rabbits.
And, going back and looking at data that was collected in the 1990s by park rangers, they found road kill possums, rabbits, raccoons on a fairly frequent basis.
But, it appears that we have already had substantial population reductions in those three mid-sized mammals that correlates with the rapid increase of python populations since 2000.
One thing we want to do is kinda stagger the cars...
There have been other studies if you go outside the park, you know north of the park or other areas where pythons are not as common or not present yet as far as we know...
You still find lots of raccoons and possums and those kinds of things.
Technician: Oh, that is pretty.
( car idling )
There you go, buddy.
It is a Florida watersnake.
They are a cottonmouth mimic.
( frogs calling )
There you go, buddy.
Well, it has kind of been a slow night.
We found a few snakes: Cornsnakes, some watersnakes, and that kind of thing, but no pythons tonight, so far.
Ahh, it is a beautiful night.
We have got thunderstorms around so lots of lightning and lots of stars too.
Yeah, we will see if we can find another python.
So, it is a pretty nice night to be out here.
I don't want to say that I am too pessimistic, but pythons are going to be here long after we are here.
Or, long after we are gone.
I guess my hope is that we will learn enough about what has happened here with the Burmese pythons to hopefully prevent similar situations from occurring in the future.
And, also through learning enough about their biology and ways they might be vulnerable to control, we might be able to control their populations in certain situations.
But, in terms of widespread control across the landscape, it at least appears that pythons are here to stay.