40 Fun Facts About Burmese Python

Which pop star danced with an albino Burmese python on her shoulders at the 2001 MTV VMAs?

Britney Spears wore the snake while premiering a new single, and later revealed that it swung its head round to her face and hissed mid-song.

Which 1992 hurricane wrecked a Florida Burmese python breeding facility, loosing its snakes into the swamps?

Andrew is often blamed for the invasion, though researchers think the breeding population more likely took hold elsewhere, from a handful of founder snakes.

A mother Burmese python wraps herself around her eggs and warms them for weeks by doing what?

Twitching her muscles in a slow shiver raises the temperature around the eggs by several degrees, but once the young cut their way out she gives them no further care.

What triggers a Burmese python's heart to bulk up, its main chamber growing about 40 percent heavier?

Eating a big meal sets off a top-to-tail rebuild: the intestines bulk up, stomach juices surge and oxygen use can climb to 40 times the resting rate.

A captive Burmese python that weighed 403 pounds, the heaviest snake then on record, went by which name?

Baby outweighed any wild snake ever measured, yet she stretched less than 19 feet, a length that a wild python caught in Florida has since beaten.

Which native Everglades reptile both hunts and is hunted by the Burmese python, depending on size?

American alligator adults can kill and swallow a python, while large pythons take small gators, and the two also compete for the same prey.

Which swamp-dwelling giant of South America is generally rated the world's heaviest snake, ahead of the Burmese python?

Green anaconda females are the bulkiest snakes in the wild, while the reticulated python of Southeast Asia holds the title of longest.

Hunters are advised not to dine on Everglades Burmese pythons because the flesh carries which toxic metal?

Mercury builds up in top predators, and python tissue tested at up to 3.5 parts per million, more than double the level Florida calls unsafe in fish.

A Burmese python has no venom, so how does it kill an animal once its jaws have a grip?

Squeezing it stops the blood supply so the victim dies of cardiac arrest, not crushed bones, and the python then swallows the kill whole.

Burma, the country that gave the Burmese python its name, is now officially known by what name?

Myanmar replaced Burma as the official English name in 1989, though the snake itself ranges far wider, from Nepal to southern China.

Road surveys in the Everglades found sightings of which mammal down 99.3 percent after Burmese pythons spread?

Raccoons all but vanished from the roadsides, opossum sightings fell almost as far, and foxes were no longer seen at all.

Until 2009, scientists classed the Burmese python as a subspecies of the giant python named after which country?

India lends its name to the Indian python, whose genes still turn up in the Everglades, where DNA tests found that some of the invaders are hybrids of the two.

About 1,600 hunters joined Florida's first Python Challenge in 2013; how many Burmese pythons did they catch?

Just 68 were caught in a month, a sign of how well pythons hide: in one test even seasoned snake experts spotted only about 1 in 100.

Pits lining a Burmese python's jaws let it find birds and mammals in total darkness by sensing what?

Body heat shows up as infrared radiation, which the pits pick up from warm-blooded animals, a handy trick for a hunter that works after dark.

The two claw-like spurs beside a Burmese python's vent are the leftover traces of what?

Hind legs shrank away in snake ancestors, leaving a sliver of thigh bone capped by a claw, which pythons still use to nudge a partner during courtship.

The Burmese python shares its name with Python, a monstrous serpent of Greek myth slain at Delphi by which god?

Apollo took over the serpent's oracle after the kill, and the priestess who spoke there became known as the Pythia.

Which animals beat human search teams at finding Burmese pythons along canals, covering three times the distance?

Dogs succeeded in 92 percent of canal searches, but thick vegetation, rocky ground and the extra cost have kept them from being widely used.

Which big cat, gone from Florida since the Ice Age, has been proposed as a predator to control Burmese pythons?

Jaguar reintroduction is only a proposal, but the cats do kill and eat giant snakes in South America today.

What weather event in January 2010 left dead Burmese pythons along Florida canal banks?

A cold snap killed many of the tropical snakes, yet plenty survived, and their descendants show genetic signs of better tolerance for chilly spells.

Young Burmese pythons are as comfortable on the ground as where, before growing too bulky?

In trees is where the lightweight youngsters often climb, gripping with a prehensile tail, a habit most adults give up as they gain girth.

Despite overrunning Florida, the Burmese python holds which status on the IUCN Red List in its Asian range?

Vulnerable has been its listing since 2012, after wild numbers fell by at least 30 percent in a decade through habitat loss and over-harvesting.

Scientists can detect hidden Burmese pythons in Florida by testing blood sucked up by which insects?

Mosquitoes in South Florida now feed on the invaders, so screening their blood can reveal snakes that searchers would walk straight past.

A 2014 radio-tracking study found that Burmese pythons moved far from their capture sites could do what?

Navigate home is what five of six displaced snakes did, crossing more than 20 kilometres to end up within 5 kilometres of where they were caught.

The popular albino Burmese python, white with butterscotch-yellow markings, cannot make which pigment?

Melanin is the dark pigment missing in this amelanistic form, so the yellow and orange pigments show through, and it is the most widely available colour morph.

Exceptionally large Burmese pythons in Florida are known to have swallowed adults of which sizeable mammal?

Deer join a menu that stretches from mice and birds up to pigs and goats for the very biggest snakes.

Hatchling Burmese pythons slit their shells open from the inside using which temporary tool?

An egg tooth does the cutting, and in snakes and lizards it is a genuine tooth growing from the front of the upper jaw, where a chick has only a hard bump on its beak.

To dissolve prey swallowed whole, a Burmese python's stomach pumps out large amounts of which chemical?

Hydrochloric acid turns the kill into a semi-liquid, since the snake cannot chew, and making it is a large share of the energy bill for digestion.

Burmese pythons first reached Florida in the 1970s through which line of business?

The exotic pet trade brought more than 90,000 of the snakes into the United States between 1996 and 2006, and many owners let go of animals that grew too big to manage.

Which native Florida wild cat has been observed raiding Burmese python nests to feed on the eggs?

Bobcat raids are a rare case of a native animal turning the tables, since the same cats have declined sharply where pythons are established.

Which small mammals, reintroduced to the Everglades, were wiped out by Burmese pythons within 11 months?

Marsh rabbits released for the study fared badly from the start: pythons accounted for 77 percent of the deaths recorded.

What is the reptile form of winter dormancy, which Burmese pythons in the north of their range enter, called?

Brumation differs from a mammal's hibernation: the reptile's reproductive organs get ready for the breeding season while it rests, and Florida's pythons do it too.

Captive Burmese pythons have produced offspring that are clones of the mother, with no father, by what process?

Parthenogenesis, sometimes called virgin birth, was confirmed in the species by genetic tests showing the young were copies of their mother.

A record 19-foot Burmese python, the longest then measured, was caught in 2023 in which Florida wilderness?

Big Cypress National Preserve in South Florida yielded the giant, which one news report described as being as long as a giraffe is tall.

Which 1900 US conservation law was used in 2012 to ban imports of Burmese pythons as injurious wildlife?

Lacey Act listing made it illegal to bring the snakes into the country, a step taken at the same time for three other giant snake species.

In Florida's 'scout snake' programme, which radio-tagged Burmese pythons lead biologists to hidden breeding partners?

Males seek out the large egg-carrying females each breeding season, so trackers who follow one scout can remove the snakes that matter most.

In which crowded Asian city-territory does the wild Burmese python still thrive as a protected species?

Hong Kong makes the Burmese python its only snake protected by law, and pythons removed from homes and farms are health-checked and released back into the countryside.

Dwarf Burmese pythons, barely half the usual length, live on islands such as Sulawesi in which country?

Indonesia has island populations on Java, Bali and Sulawesi, and breeders have begun working with these small snakes, which average about two metres long on Bali.

A newly hatched Burmese python usually holds off hunting until it has completed what?

Its first shed comes before its first hunt, and many hatchlings sit tight inside the slit egg until they are ready to peel.

The rare leucistic Burmese python is a patternless bright white, with eyes of which colour?

Blue eyes on a spotless white snake set it apart from the albino form, which has pinkish-red eyes and yellow markings.

Among 25 bird species found inside Everglades Burmese pythons, which large wading bird most worried researchers?

Wood stork remains turned up among birds from nine different orders, identified in the guts of 85 pythons examined by 2011.