Photo from Orlando Sentinel
This latest cold snap should put snakes out of our minds for the next few months anyways but here is a story out of Florida I just couldn’t pass up highlighting. A snake swallowing a adult deer whole is unbelievable and had I not seen the photo and the story I doubt I’d believe it.
An adult deer was found intact inside a huge Burmese python Thursday, after the snake was captured and killed in the Everglades.
Contractors for the South Florida Water Management District encountered the python on a tree island in western Miami-Dade County, according to the district. It was killed with a shotgun blast.
The 15.7-foot snake had a massive bulge from a recently consumed 76-pound female deer, the largest intact prey ever found in a Burmese python in Florida, said Skip Snow, a biologist and python specialist at Everglades National Park, who conducted the necropsy.
The python, an ambush predator, had staked out a known deer trail, he said. When the deer walked by, the snake presumably seized the animal in its sharp, backward-pointing teeth, crushed the deer under its weight and coiled around it, killing the deer before consuming it, he said.
