Snake vs. Gator

It's a dead heat
Clash of exotic python, native species raises concerns over food chain in Everglades

By Curtis Morgan
Knight Ridder/Tribune
Published October 6, 2005

MIAMI -- A meeting between two of the largest and fiercest predators in the Everglades--a Burmese python and an American alligator--ended in a scene as rare as it was bizarre.

The 13-foot snake and 6-foot gator both wound up dead, locked so gruesomely it is hard to make heads, tails or any other body part of either creature.

When the carcasses were found last week in an isolated marsh in Everglades National Park, the gator's tail and hind legs protruded from the ruptured gut of a python, which had swallowed it whole.

For scientists, exactly how the clash occurred is a compelling curiosity. More important, the encounter provides evidence that giant exotic snakes not only have invaded the Everglades but also could challenge the native gator for a perch atop the food chain.

"It's just off-the-charts absurd to think that this kind of animal, a significant top-of-the-pyramid kind of predator in its native land, is trying to make a living in South Florida," said park biologist Skip Snow, who has tracked the snakes' spread.

Likely abandoned by pet owners, pythons have been seen in the Everglades since the 1980s. But in the last two years alone, Snow has documented 156 python captures, a surge that has convinced biologists the snakes are multiplying in the wild.

The growing population of such large predators also raises questions about threats to native species and whether anything indigenous--gators, for starters--might be able to consume and potentially control the large snake species.

The latest find was spotted floating in a spike rush marsh on Sept. 26 by Michael Barron, a helicopter pilot flying park researchers to tree islands. Snow examined it the next day.

The discovery indicates that the snakes can live anywhere in the Everglades, Snow said. Most earlier finds have been on park fringes, roads or parking lots.

It also confirmed that snakes and gators have an appetite for each other.

Earlier this year, Snow documented a gator killing and eating a python. The latest encounter showed that a hungry adult snake will attempt to eat a sizable gator.

Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor and expert on crocodiles and gators in the Everglades, said size would probably dictate which species would win most encounters, and scientists could only speculate why this one ended in double deaths.

Snow's detailed field notes provide some evidence the snake was the attacker: There were wounds on the gator's head and "large wads of alligator skin" in what remained of the snake's digestive tract.