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The second - tumid Burmese python ever discovered in South Florida has been captured after give people posture on the tremendous snake , which was find stretched out across a route in the Big Cypress National Preserve .

Initially , the python - hunters thought the female snake was an alligator due to its size . " It was more than a snake , it was a devil , " conservationist Mike Elfenbein toldCBS News .

a burmese python

Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) are invasive in Florida.

After realizing it was a Burmese python ( Python bivittatus ) , one of the men , Carter Gavlock , grab the snake ’s tail to constrain the animal , but it dragged him away . " That was a bad error because the snake damn near took him into the canal . There was nothing he could do to stop it , " Elfenbein say . finally , five men had to sit on the Snake River to capture it .

The python weighed 198 pounds ( 90 kilogram ) and measured 17.2 feet ( 5.2 meters ) , making it the second - heaviest ever catch in Florida . Theheaviest Burmese pythonwas becharm in 2022 and matter 215 pounds ( 98 kg ) .

associate : Burmese pythons are helping betrayer take over Florida ’s Everglades — and that could help spread disease

A Burmese python in Florida hangs from a tree branch at dusk.

Burmese python are native to southeastern Asia and considered an invasive specie in Florida . These Snake have a declamatory raising population within and around the Everglades and have proveddevastating to aboriginal wildlife , despite exploit over recent years to reduce their numeral .

Pythons are hard to detect , which makes universe estimates hard , but X of 1000 of the snake are thought to live in Florida . Researchfrom the U.S. Geological Survey published this class found that more than 10,000 Burmese pythons have been captured in the state in the preceding five years .

— ghastly video reveals the moment a 5 - metrical unit alligator corpse was cut from the gut of a all in python

a photo of a man pulling a great white shark into a boat

— GPS - tag opossum and raccoons could be sacrificed to capture Florida ’s invading pythons

— ophidian choking on incursive fish the size of it of its heading saved by scientist

Nobody knows exactlyhow the coinage first arrive in the state . In the 1970s , the animals were popular in the pet trade and may have been released both accidentally and intentionally . Burmese python get down to thrive in Florida in the eighties and nineties and havespreadacross nearly all of southern Florida .

A photograph of a newly discovered mosasaur fossil in a human hand.

confine the cattle ranch of Burmese pythons is a key goal of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission , and it is legal for people to hunt down and down them humanely .

Earlier this year , a16 - base - tenacious ( 5 m ) Burmese pythonwas catch and killed in the Florida Everglades with a clutch of 60 eggs that were day from being laid .

a royal python curled around a branch in the jungle

Person holding a snakes head while using a pointed plastic object to reveal a fang.

a closeup of a fossil

Sunda island pit viper ( Trimeresurus insularis ) on a branch. Photo taken in Jakarta.

a photo of the skin beginning to shed from a snake�s face

King cobra faces camera.

Fragment of a stone with relief carving in the ground

An illustration of microbiota in the gut

an illustration of DNA

a reconstruction of an early reptile

an illustration of Epstein-Barr virus

hands that are wrinkled from water

An artist’s illustration of long ribbon-like auroras rippling across the Martian sky