Burmese pythons are chomping down on bigger bites than we ever thought possible.
Professor Bruce Jayne from the University of Cincinnati has revealed that these slithery giants in the Everglades National Park can open their jaws wider than any maths model predicted.
The hungriest of these serpents can boast a gape circumference over 81 centimetres – that’s like a 32-inch waistline on your jeans!
This means they’re gobbling up more critters across southern Florida, and it’s bad news for local wildlife like foxes, bobcats, and raccoons which have been dwindling thanks to these invasive predators.
These pythons don’t mess about; they swallow their prey whole, from deer to alligators, and it’s all down to how wide they can stretch their jaws, known as the snake’s gape.
Bruce, along with his research buddies Ian Easterling and Ian Bartoszek from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, measured some massive snakes stretching 15, 17, and even 19 feet long.
Previous studies looked at pythons with a gape of 22 centimetres (8.7 inches) in diameter, but Bruce’s team found a python with a whopping 26 centimetres (10.2 inches) gape. “That doesn’t sound like a lot — just 18% bigger,” he said, but in the snake world, that’s a game-changer.
Researchers have discovered that Burmese pythons are capable of killing and consuming animals nearly too large to swallow, based on the prey items found inside them. One snake was observed devouring a 77-pound deer, which represented two-thirds of the snake’s total mass.
“Watching an invasive apex predator swallow a full-sized deer in front of you is something that you will never forget,” Ian said.
He added: ” 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.”
Understanding the limits of what predators can eat can help predict the ecological impact these invasive snakes might have as they spread into new areas.
The study was published in the journal Reptiles & Amphibians.
For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.