Burmese pythons can grow to 20ft
February 2012: The scenario sounds like a low-budget movie from the 1970s: humongous snakes are on the loose, eating everything in sight. But this is real - a problem that an American university and its canines are helping to combat.
Auburn researchers used detection dogs in the Everglades National Park to find Burmese pythons during a recent study on ways to manage and eradicate these non-native, invasive snakes, which are eating native wildlife, mostly mammals and birds.
‘The ultimate use for detection dogs is to suppress the expanding python population and to eliminate them in small areas, such as on an island. Our main concern is their impact on other wildlife,' said Christina Romagosa of Auburn's School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences.
‘Interraction with humans is also a problem. The snakes, like alligators, can get in swimming pools, eat small dogs and cats, and could injure a human.'
Auburn worked last year with the Everglades Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area, or ECISMA, to test how well dogs could pinpoint the snakes' locations so wildlife agencies could remove the snakes.
The problem started years ago, and was probably a result of irresponsible python owners.
The problem started years ago, and was probably a result of irresponsible python owners.
Tens of thousands of Burmese pythons now living in Florida
The first Burmese python was spotted in Florida in 1979 and the number is now estimated in the tens of thousands. In January this year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service made it illegal to import Burmese pythons or transport them across state lines.
‘Irresponsible people released these snakes because they became too large and difficult to care for,' she said. ‘Now they have reproduced many times over. Hurricane Andrew in 1992 probably didn't help when a warehouse containing pythons was destroyed.'
The Army Corps of Engineers contacted Auburn's EcoDogs program in 2010 about the possibility of using dogs to help find the pythons, which led to the pilot study.
EcoDogs is a collaborative project between the School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences and the College of Veterinary Medicine's Animal Health and Performance Programme, where the dogs are trained and maintained.
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