(Miami) A 22-year-old found a Burmese python 5.79 meters long in Florida, the largest ever observed according to a local association in this American state where the species is considered invasive.
The specimen was located Monday 70 km west of Miami in the Big Cypress National Preserve during an expedition aimed at curbing the progress of these invasive snakes, among the largest in the world.
Jake Waleri, 22, posted a video on the social network Instagram in which an amateur hunter can be seen pulling the python by the tail on the side of a road, before subduing it with the help of another man .
The captured animal weighed 120 pounds and was taken to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, an environmental organization that studies Burmese pythons.
“We had a feeling these snakes could be this big and now we have proof of that,” center biologist Ian Easterling said in a statement, calling the size a record.
In 2020, a 5.71 meter Burmese python was captured in Florida.
The Burmese python, brought from Southeast Asia at the end of the last century, found a perfect ecosystem to breed in the Everglades, a vast subtropical wetland in the south of the peninsula.
This constrictor snake has no natural predators and feeds on other reptiles, birds, and mammals such as raccoons.