Scottish animal welfare baffled by python mutilation in Aberdeen

Two dead 5ft snakes were discovered at a nature reserve within a month of each other

A python has been found dead, slit open along the length of its body, while another was found in pieces, prompting an investigation at a nature reserve in Scotland.

The 1.5-metre (5ft) snakes were discovered within a month of each other at Den of Maidencraig in Skene Road, Aberdeen. A member of the public found the slit-open snake on 7 January, while the second was found on 31 January.

It is not known whether the first one was cut open while it was still alive. Both reptiles are thought to have been pets at some point.

The Scottish Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SSPCA) is appealing for information as it tries to track down whoever is responsible.

The SSPCA inspector Fiona McKenzie said: “They were both adult pythons and approximately 5ft in length. The first snake discovered had been slit up the stomach, the full length of its body.

“We’re unsure whether this happened when the snake was still alive. The second was found in pieces. This could have been due to the level of decomposition.”

She added: “We believe that both of these reptiles were pets at some point.They were found near the pond at Den of Maidencraig. They could have been left at the same time, it’s difficult to know at this stage.

“We want to find the person responsible for dumping these snakes in the condition they were found in.”

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When Hunting Pythons, It Helps to Dance Like a Monkey—and Carry a Sledgehammer - via Herp Digest

Florida’s Everglades are crawling with nonnative giant snakes, and authorities have hired an elite corps of hunters to track them down; ‘you juke left, you juke right’

By Arian Campo-Flores, Wall Street Journal, April 21, 2017 

THE EVERGLADES, Fla.—For people who prefer to avoid large, scary snakes, Tom Rahill’s routine won’t be of much use.

 

Anyone desiring to get acquainted with a python deep in the wild, though, would do well to learn his “scalded-monkey dance.”

 

That’s the shimmy Mr. Rahill does when he hunts down a fat Burmese python in the Everglades—a bob-and-weave boogie he uses to avoid the snake’s strikes until he can subdue and grab it.

 

“The attractive thing about this,” he said of snake-hunting, “is it’s very primal.”

There are multiple ways to catch a python, and Mr. Rahill employs a good number of them as a member of an elite squad of hunters the South Florida Water Management District pays to track down these interlopers, which biologists estimate to number in the tens of thousands.

The nonnative serpents have spread through the Everglades, gobbling birds and mammals. They grow as thick as telephone poles and as long as 20 feet. They aren’t venomous, killing by coiling around an animal and suffocating it before gulping. There have been reports abroad of pythons swallowing humans.

“I’m feeling good about this,” said Mr. Rahill one morning last month, trudging through dense brush while swatting mosquitoes and avoiding poisonwoods that can trigger rashes.

Mr. Rahill is the 59-year-old founder of Swamp Apes, a group that takes military veterans into the wilderness for various activities including snake hunting. He said it has bagged more than 400 pythons.

“This is perfect python habitat,” he said, approaching an elevated hardwood hammock. He looked for telltale signs—matted grass, shed skin—jabbing his walking stick into crevices.

He sniffed the air for python poop. “Acrid,” he explained, “more biting than gator” variety.

Mr. Rahill, a telecom administrator, is among 25 hunters the agency selected from more than 1,000 applicants to hunt down the beasts. The elite few include three Swamp Apes members and Dusty “The Wildman” Crum, 36, an orchid grower whose hunting team in a 2016 contest nabbed a 15-foot python.

 

The agency pays $8.10 an hour, $50 per python—must be delivered dead—and $25 for each foot over four.

The program is the latest in a string of attempts by state and federal agencies to eradicate the beasts, from deploying dogs trained to pick up their scent to releasing “Judas snakes” outfitted with radio transmitters to lure other pythons.

In January, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and other parties hired two members of the snake-hunting Irula tribe in India, who the agency says captured 33 pythons over a two-month period.

They began each day with a sort of prayer and “would ask the powers that be for the vision to see these snakes,” said Joe Wasilewski, 64, a conservation biologist who helped arrange the effort.

 

Then they would light up thin Indian “bidi” cigarettes and head out, searching for faint signs of the serpents. “They’re so darn good at it,” Mr. Wasilewski said. “They’re like exterminators.”

None of the initiatives has done much to curb the Everglades-python population. Though the snakes can reach monstrous proportions, their camouflage and tendency to hide in holes and under leaves make them difficult to spot. “You can stand right on top of it in vegetation,” said Bryan Falk, 38, a U.S. Geological Survey research ecologist, “and you wouldn’t know it.”

Pythons, native to Asia, probably entered the Everglades decades ago when they escaped from, or were released by, people who bought them as pets, scientists say. They eat marsh rabbits and wading birds, robbing native predators such as panthers and alligators.

Bobby Hill, 65, whose job is to remove exotic species from land overseen by the water-management district, said he has found deer hoofs, alligator scales and a bobcat claw in pythons’ bellies. Years ago, along local highways, “you’d see road kill—raccoons, possums,” he said. “You don’t see that too much anymore.”

Hunters say the best time to find pythons is after a cold night when the sun begins to bake the ground where the reptiles head to bask. Most of the year, the steam-bath environment sends them searching for cover.

If a hunter locates one, the challenge is catching it. In dense foliage, Mr. Rahill yanks on the body to pull it toward a clearer spot where it can’t coil around anything. Then he tries to subdue it by the neck.

There are dangers at either end: strikes from its head and defensive sprays from its tail of musk and excrement. “They’ll fling white blobs of poop everywhere,” Mr. Rahill said.

Which is where the scalded-monkey dance comes handy. “You juke left, you juke right” to avoid strikes, he said, until the reptile is tired out and provides an opening to pounce.

Another Swamp Ape, he said, does more of a ballet movement. “He’s a joy to watch, so smooth and fluid.”

Mr. Hill prefers a simpler snake-subjugation tactic: He grabs his Winchester 12-gauge shotgun and fires at the python’s head. “A head shot is considered a humane way” to kill a snake, said Mr. Hill, who said he has been involved in capturing more than 700 pythons.

On the recent day in the Everglades, Mr. Rahill found no snake in the brush, so he tried a method he calls “road cruising.” He hugged the roadside in his black Chevy Cavalier—295,000 miles on the odometer, missing a hubcap—searching through the open window for that python-skin glisten.

He ended the day empty-handed, saying “the key to successful pythoning is perseverance.”

Novice hunters often don’t realize how difficult it is to pursue pythons, he said. “Some people think pythons are waiting on levees with signs saying, ‘Welcome to Florida.’ ”

Days later, farther north, he was tramping through brush and glimpsed a python pattern on a mound, he said. He lunged at it, grabbed at the snake midbody and pulled it into the open. The snake tried to strike him several times before he subdued and bagged it.

The 7-footer yielded a $125 bonus. “I earned that snake,” he said.

The snake earned a swift end dealt by Mr. Rahill’s sledgehammer.

New test and better understanding of deadly infection in boas and pythons

Date: December 16, 2016

Source: Morris Animal Foundation

Inclusion body disease is a serious, chronic viral infection of snakes and can be devastating in captive reptile populations. Now, a newly published study in The Veterinary Journal sheds light on the disease, and may help veterinary care teams better protect the health of their populations of large snakes. The study was funded in part by a grant from Morris Animal Foundation.

Found in both boa constrictor and python species, inclusion body disease (IBD) signs may include periodic or chronic regurgitation, head tremors, abnormal shedding, anorexia, clogged nostrils, and pneumonia. The disease can rapidly progress to nervous system signs, such as disorientation, corkscrewing of the head and neck, holding the head in abnormal and unnatural positions, rolling onto the back or stargazing.

Current strategies for IBD control include identification and isolation of affected snakes, but making a definitive diagnosis of IBD in a living animal can be challenging. Infected snakes may continue to feed and otherwise behave normally, and may infect other snakes prior to developing clinical signs of illness and chronic disease. The prevalence of sub-clinical, infectious IBD disease in snakes prior to this study was not well understood.

"In addition to developing diagnostic tests for IBD, a major finding in this study is the subclinical nature of IBD," said Dr. Elliott Jacobson, one of the papers' authors and faculty member at the College of Veterinary Medicine, University of Florida. "Many apparently healthy boa constrictors have not only the reptarenavirus, that is considered the causative agent, but also have subclinical IBD."

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UF researchers develop blood test for fatal disease of boas and pythons-(Inclusion body disease, or IBD) – via Herp Digest

(Published: January 29th, 2014-Semi-old news, but important enough to repeat)

Press Release - Category: Infectious Diseases and Pathology, News Releases, Public Relations, Research, Zoological Medicine

University of Florida researchers have developed a simple immune-based screening test to identify the presence of a debilitating and usually fatal disease that strikes boas and pythons in captivity as well as those sold to the pet trade worldwide.

Known as inclusion body disease, or IBD, the highly infectious disease most commonly affects boa constrictors but pythons and other snake species in the boid family are also occasionally infected with the virus that causes the disease. IBD was first seen in snakes in the late 1970s, said Elliott Jacobson, D.V.M., Ph.D., a professor emeritus of zoological medicine at the UF College of Veterinary Medicine and co-author of a study that appeared in December in PLOS ONE.

“We don’t know the prevalence, but we see more of IBD in the United States because there are some 2 million boas being kept as pets in this country,” Jacobson said. “This simple blood test will help determine whether or not an animal has this disease and potentially will help clean up colonies of snakes that will ultimately be disease-free.”

Although snakes infected with IBD may display neurological signs, such as head-tilting, chronic regurgitation or disequilibrium, there is also a population of snakes that are subclinical, meaning they are infected but otherwise appear healthy.

“That’s a big problem, because healthy-seeming animals that are affected with IBD are being sold and sent around the world,” he said. “However, they may develop the disease sometime later and may be the source of infection for other snakes.”

On Jacobson’s research team at the UF veterinary college were his former graduate student, Li-Wen Chang, B.V.M., Ph.D., the principal investigator in the study, and Jorge Hernandez, D.V.M., Ph.D., a veterinary epidemiologist.

To develop the test, the researchers studied a monoclonal antibody produced in response to a unique protein that accumulates in cells of snakes having IBD. They then sequenced the protein in an effort to further understand the nature and cause of the disease. Although the cause of IBD is unclear, the UF team found genetic links of this unique protein are associated with a family of viruses that primarily infect rodents but may infect humans. However, there is no evidence to indicate that the virus that causes IBD can infect people.

When Chang joined the study in 2008, she realized the limited availability of snake databases and potential causative agents of the disease presented additional challenges.

“It took us almost a year to finally produce this antibody, and three more years to validate its performance for immuno-based diagnostic tests,” Chang said.

University of California-San Francisco researchers identified the Golden Gate virus in 2012 and scientists now consider it to be a potential cause of IBD.

UF’s findings supplement that theory, although more studies of disease transmission need to be conducted to confirm the role of Golden Gate virus in the development of IBD, Jacobson said.

The research was performed at the UF’s Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research through the university’s veterinary diagnostic laboratories, where the new test is now offered. It will supplement existing molecular and histological tests, which are more widely available but also more expensive, Jacobson added. In addition, the test’s ease of use and simplicity will offer veterinary practitioners a good first-line diagnostic tool to screen for IBD in snake species that show signs of the disease, or even before these signs occur.

“We know now that this disease exists in multiple collections and populations,” Jacobson said. “It is important to determine why some snakes are not showing clinical signs of the disease. Could there be another agent operating synergistically? Perhaps one virus needs to be present but another virus needs to be present also, or perhaps the subclinical cases only have one of those agents, not both.”

Only strict quarantine of new arrivals to snake populations and the culling of infected snakes, as well as mite control, can mitigate the spread of the disease, according to a 2013 fact sheet prepared by the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians’ infectious disease committee.

“It’s a situation of management,” Jacobson said. “You’ll never completely eradicate this disease.”

Jacobson and Chang collaborated with an interdisciplinary team throughout the university that included Ann Fu, M.D., Ph.D., Marjorie Chow, Diane Duke, Linda Green and Karen Kelley, Currently, Chang is a resident in clinical pathology at the Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital, National Chung Hsin University in Taiwan. Edward Wozniak, D.V.M., Ph.D., a public health veterinarian working in Texas, also collaborated in the study.

Pythons and boas shed new light on reptile evolution

Date: June 14, 2016

Source: Australian National University

A new study into pythons and boas has for the first time found the two groups of snakes evolved independently to share similar traits, shedding new light on how the reptiles evolved.

Pythons and boas are two families that include the largest snakes in the world, like the reticulated python and the anaconda boa, which have been known to grow close to eight meters in length.

The Australian National University (ANU) study found that by living in the same habitat, pythons and boas evolved independently to look similar. This happened at least five times in different habitats. Aquatic pythons look like aquatic boas, burrowing pythons look like borrowing boas and tree-dwelling pythons look like tree-dwelling boas.

Lead researcher Damien Esquerre said the study found pythons and boas were an important example of convergent evolution in reptiles. Convergent evolution is where species adapt to the same conditions and evolve similar traits.

"The finding of such a strong case of convergent evolution demonstrates the power of natural selection and adaptation in living organisms," said Mr Esquerre from the ANU Research School of Biology.

"If we see that different groups evolve the same things independently when they face the same challenges, we can find predictability in evolution."

Other famous examples of convergent evolution are sharks and dolphins, which are not related but have evolved similar body plans. Similarly, the extinct Tasmanian Tiger, a marsupial mammal, and the wolf, a placental mammal, evolved similar body plans.

Read more …

Florida is measuring its invasive python problem by the ton -In the latest Python Challenge, researchers bagged over 2,000 pounds of the problematic snakes and discovered some of the species' secrets. – via Herp Digest

Jaymi Heibuch 3/22/16. Mother Nature Network

Over the last few decades, Florida's invasive Burmese python problem has grown at a startling rate. The pythons, released either by accident or on purpose, have gained a foothold in the state and researchers are scrambling to find ways to minimize the damage they're causing.

In its native range in Southeast Asia, the future of the species is questionable. The IUCN lists it as vulnerable to extinction. Yet in Florida, the non-native snakes are flourishing and causing the population of many native species, from birds to mammals, to plummet.

A study published last year by scientists from the University of Florida, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission showed that pythons devoured 77 percent of the marsh rabbits tracked by the researchers. It was proof positive that the dramatic decline in marsh rabbits is due to the presence of invasive pythons. Researchers also suspect pythons are behind a decrease in deer populations.

Not only are the pythons responsible for decimating prey populations, but they're also outcompeting native predator species. The effect the snakes have on the ecological balance of Florida's wilderness can't really be understated, and it's a growing problem.

"Recent research has suggested that the predation pressure exerted by these pythons is unsustainable and causing big declines in native mammal populations. I see these declines in native animals as the biggest problem caused by the Burmese pythons," Dr. David Steen of Auburn University told MNN.

As part of the response to the problem, researchers launched the Python Challenge. The event both raises public awareness about the problem and also gives researchers a chance to learn about the species.

This year, a Python Challenge in Collier County collected more than 2,000 pounds of snakes in three months in just that county. One of the snakes was a male measuring 16 feet long and weighing 140 pounds, which set a new state record for size. The researchers participating in the challenge — including Ian Bartoszek from Conservancy of Southwest Florida, Paul Andreadis from Denison University, and staff from the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve and the United States Geological Survey — used a strategy that is not only clever for catching more snakes but also revealed previously unknown behavior.

Fitting male pythons with radio trackers, the researchers essentially turned them into "snitch snakes" that they could follow during the breeding season.

"Pythons, and snakes in general, are very hard to find because they are highly camouflaged and don’t need to move around as much as warm-blooded animals," explains Steen. "So, by following one snake during the breeding season it is likely that you’ll be able to come across many others that you never would have found otherwise."

And the researchers certainly did. They could track the males to females, and they note that finding a pregnant female before she lays eggs can help make at least a dent in the year's population of pythons.

"It’s not like I’m waving a flag and declaring victory. But we’ve removed over 2,000 pounds of snakes from a fairly localized area,” Bartoszek told the Miami Herald. "Through active searching and radio telemetry, one little snake busted up multiple breeding aggregations."

Though the strategy may not signal the end of the python problem, it does signal progress.

Steen echoes this: "I do not think that we currently have the knowledge or the technology to eradicate pythons from Florida. But, this is an area of active research; what if someone were to develop a trap that uses chemical signaling? That could potentially be the trick to making a dent in their numbers."

To learn more about Florida's major python problem, check out this video from PBS Nature:

Study finds Everglades pythons like saltwater mangroves as much as freshwater marshes - Herp Digest

Craig Pittman, Tampa Times Staff Writer, April 28, 2015 

For five years, scientists tracked the 19 Burmese pythons around the Everglades, following their radio and GPS signals. They were hoping to learn where the invasive snakes prefer to live.

The answer is: pretty much everywhere. They live in the trees, and they live underground. They mostly thrive in freshwater marshes — but there was one that, to the scientists' surprise, found a home in the saltwater mangrove swamp at the Florida peninsula's southern tip and stuck around for quite a while.

"They're completely capable of living in the Gulf of Mexico mangroves for a year," said Kris Hart, a research ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey and the lead author on a study released Tuesday. "He was just happy as a clam in that saltwater."

The study is an attempt to figure out where best to target efforts to eliminate the most famous invasive species in the country — and to get a glimpse of where the big snakes might go next, Hart said.

The scientists put tags on the pythons they had captured and released them as close to where they had been caught as they could. Then they tracked where the reptiles roamed.

For the most part, each of the pythons stayed in an area roughly 3 miles wide by 3 miles long. They seemed to prefer sloughs and coastal habitats, particularly tree islands — tropical hardwood hammocks where the roots have collected enough detritus to create an island slightly higher than the water level in the River of Grass.

But then there's that one that spent a year in Cape Sable hanging amid the mangroves. Most snakes are sensitive to saltwater, which once gave scientists some hope for containing the pythons to the Everglades. Now they know the big constrictors are just as comfortable hanging out by the gulf as any beach-bound Florida tourist.

Scientists have already seen evidence that the pythons can swim, too. A few years ago one scientist trying to track down what happened to an endangered rat species that had been bred in captivity and released in Key Largo discovered that the tracking signal for one rat was coming from inside a python that had apparently swum over from the mainland.

The one in Cape Sable shows how adaptable the pythons can be. "They can live in the freshwater environment and be fine," Hart said, "and they can live in the saltwater environment and be fine."

Florida is infested with more exotic species than any other state, with the roster ranging from feral hogs originally imported by Spanish conquistadors to giant African land snails smuggled in a few years ago by a religious cult. But the pythons have proven the most persistent and difficult to deal with.

Nobody knows how many pythons there might be in the Everglades. One estimate said there might be 150,000, but that number has been disputed by some experts. Pythons are ambush hunters, so adept at concealment that biologists have had a hard time spotting snakes that have been fitted with radio tags that give their exact position. That makes it difficult to do a census.

What is clear is that pythons have largely taken over the southern half of Everglades National Park. Wherever the snakes go, scientists have reported finding a 99 percent decrease in raccoons, a 98 percent drop in opossums, a 94 percent drop in white-tailed deer and an 87 percent falloff for bobcats — and rabbits and foxes were gone entirely.

Generally the pythons in the study ate birds and mammals and even some alligators. The alligators fight back, though. In 2005 an Everglades National Park employee snapped photos of a python that had died while attempting to swallow an alligator. However, the people licensed by the state to hunt pythons have been told not to eat whatever they catch. The big snakes are full of mercury, a toxic chemical that may have been in the tissues of whatever the snakes ate.

State officials have tried everything they can think of to get rid of the pythons, including holding a monthlong python hunt outside the national park's boundaries. Most of the 1,500 hunters who signed up for the 2013 Python Challenge never saw a single snake. They killed 68 — fewer than the number of eggs typically laid by a female python — but the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission announced this month that it's planning another hunt for 2016.

The extensive studies that have been done on the Everglades pythons, such as this one, Hart said, mean that "we know more about these guys here in Florida than we know about them in their native range."

Ironically, in Southeast Asia where the pythons come from, they are classified as a threatened species, in part because of the loss of habitat, and in part because they are hunted and killed for their skin and meat.

Python's Extreme Eating Abilities Explained

The first complete sequence of any snake genome reveals that Burmese pythons evolved rapidly to be able to eat prey as big as their own bodies.

The python's amazing eating abilities derive from the genetic capacity to alter its metabolism and the size of its organs after a meal, according to a new study published today (Dec. 2) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Some organs more than double in size in the two days after a python, which averages about 12 feet (3.7 meters) long, eats.

Eating isn't the only extreme snakes have gone to in their evolutionary history. To become the long, slithering creatures they are today, snakes have lost their limbs, reduced one of their lungs, elongated their skeletons and organs, developed a hinged jaw, and in many cases, evolved a toxic brew of venoms. They also rapidly fluctuate their metabolism based on their feast-or-famine diet of periodically swallowing large prey whole.

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