Wow.. Just Wow...

Looks like open season....


http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/01/05...est=latestnews

http://www.pythonchallenge.org/

I wonder how much the pythons get for each hunter they kill? Probably depends on size.

Gotta love the thought of a bunch of people crawling around a swamp, shooting whatever moves, in hopes it's worth money. This is a disaster/reality show waiting to happen.

Noelle

This is actually pretty old news, and we already had a discussion thread on it...

They are African rock pythons they are extremely dangerous and are wiping out other species down there because they are not indigenous to America, so they have no natural predators. They are over populating and going into peoples yards and these snakes get huge. There is a report of someone owning one and it killed a kid while they were sleeping.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep...on/na-python27
No joke I saw it on animal planet there was a huge thing on it.

Sounds like another exaggerated non-issue to me. Not saying there is no problem/danger, but anytime the media hears about anything snake related they have a field day with it. This article was from 2009 so it's pretty old.

I noticed that they stated that Burms and Rocks can interbreed, which they can be enticed to do so in captivity, but is probably unlikely in the wild. They also stated the offspring would more than likely be sterile, which is not necessarily the case.

I also don't buy it when they say that a hybrid betweent he two could be a more hardy animal than with either parenting species. This has been up for debate in the past as well.

OLD NEWS

Originally Posted by MamaCarvalho

They are African rock pythons they are extremely dangerous and are wiping out other species down there because they are not indigenous to America, so they have no natural predators.

While true they do not belong there and I support their removal, the everglades study is flawed. The pythons are not wiping out other species. Please don't buy into it all, the media, peta, hsus are running smear campaign.
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/pu...asive_hype.php

Originally Posted by MamaCarvalho

There is a report of someone owning one and it killed a kid while they were sleeping.

the entire situation is very suspicious, I still do not believe the snake killed that poor little girl. Regardless, here is a link to a prior discussion about this issue if you are interested:
http://www.faunaclassifieds.com/foru...d.php?t=137947

parents were both sentenced to 12 years:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/python-owne...ry?id=14373295

Well I dont agree with people buying pets and letting them loose.. So how about we stop attacking the people that are trying to help the environment and start attacking those people who buy animals and get bored after about a week and decided to just let them go...

I mean dont get me wrong, I own snakes I love the species but there are some wild species out there that dont make good pets period. And there are some seriously stupid people out there that dont think that letting a foreign predator out into a world that is not theirs, cant be harmful...

I have never kept any Rock's before but keep a small handful of Burms wich are similar in size and care. They actually are not that bad and are not typically agressive. I'm not saying they aren't dangerous at all, but the risk is minimal if they are kept and handled properly. It does take a special person to love an animal of that stature that you can't even hold or handle at times. I do agree with removing them from where they don't belong, but I don't beleive it's quite the problem that has been all over the media. I captivity, they get RI's with minor mistakes in their keeping, so in the wild in Florida, they will eventually be wiped out by weather. The cold will get them one year.

Nobody should ever release any animals into the wild unless it is a species survival program with endangered animals. Even if they are from that area, once they are in captivity for a length of time, they will probably not survive long term in the wild any longer. If they are Captive Born, they probably have a near zero chance if they are raised in captiity. I beleive the only reason they survive in Florida at all is the fact that they don't have any larger preditor to kill them once they are that big. Burms and Rocks, though, are great eaters and can usually be fed almost anything live or dead. I feed mine chicken parts at times to fatten them up and they will eat almost anything offered live or F/T or prekilled. There was even a guy that was talked about in one of the forums a while back that got caught feeding dogs and/or cats to his large snakes.

Exaggerated non issue is right.
Never knew to even question the hype until now, but with the python hunt it's been revealed that the population of pythons are drastically lower then what anyone has "predicted" (aka pulled out of their rears).
68 pythons killed out of supposed 15000 with "hunters" combing the swamps.
And they still won't even admit it, they just say the hunt flopped.
'Xcuse me, you don't put out cash awards and give people a chance to get on t.v and only end up with 68 dead snakes out of thousands. Doesn't happen.