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[Scott W]

Source - BBC news

An unusual clash between a 6-foot (1.8m) alligator and a 13-foot (3.9m) python has left two of the deadliest predators dead in Florida's swamps.
The Burmese python tried to swallow its fearsome rival whole but then exploded.

The remains of the two giant reptiles were found by astonished rangers in the Everglades National Park.

The rangers say the find suggests that non-native Burmese pythons might even challenge alligators' leading position in the food chain in the swamps.

Clearly, if they can kill an alligator they can kill other species

Prof Frank Mazzotti

The python's remains with the victim's tail protruding from its burst midsection were found last week. The head of the python was missing.

"Encounters like that are almost never seen in the wild... And here we are," Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.

"They were probably evenly matched in size. If the python got a good grip on the alligator before the alligator got a good grip on him, he could win," Professor Mazzotti said.

He said the alligator may have clawed at the python's stomach, leading it to burst.

"Clearly, if they can kill an alligator they can kill other species," Prof Mazzotti said.

He said that there had been four known encounters between the two species in the past. In the other cases, the alligator won or the battle was an apparent draw.

Burmese pythons - many of whom have been dumped by their owners - have thrived in the wet and hot climate of Florida's swamps over the past 20 years



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[Scott W]

lol.......well i reckon it's real, it looks how i would of imagined to find it.

not sure who or why they said fake?
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[JStroud]

Me! But as I was typing a response my internet cut out. It looks more like someone came across it and jsut slashed at its belly. Your forgetting local people don't want pythons living in the Florida wetlands so they wouldn't be very welcome if seen - hence the reason for no head. After killing it the belly could've been slashed to see what was inside. I dunno, just doesn't really look real to me, something weird about it. Plus large pythons aren't renound for their aquatic hunting, not saying it hasn't happened, but just seems a bit suspect to me

[Scott W]

but do you think it's eaten the gator?

Bear in mind that the everglades is one big swamp, and they are surviving and breeding there.
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[Scott W]

Source - MIAMI HERALD (Florida) 26 January 03

The main event: Gator vs. python - For 24 hours, Everglades titans fight before stunned onlookers (Curtis Morgan)
Wildlife watching in Everglades National Park rarely gets this wild.
A hefty alligator and huge Burmese python left visitors and park rangers awestruck recently when they locked in a marathon struggle for survival that spanned two days.
The encounter between two of the Everglades' largest and fiercest predators, one native and one not, has never been observed before in the park. The first one on record just happened to take place along the Anhinga Trail, the park's most popular tourist stop, on a jammed weekend.
The tussle attracted as many as 200 onlookers at a time, including Rafael Manresa, an interior designer from Kendall who caught it on camera. He had stopped hoping for some pretty pictures of birds and tranquil landscapes. Instead, he got a once-in-lifetime shot of nature baring its fangs -- a savage sight he couldn't shake, even back home.
''It was incredible,'' he said. ``I laid in bed for like a half-hour. I was so wired, I couldn't sleep. I have given up coffee, so I know it wasn't caffeine.''
The encounter, the talk of the park since it occurred Jan. 5 and 6, has quickly taken on some tall-tale aspects. But by any measure, it was amazing.
The python was reported to be anywhere from 10 to 15 feet, the gator, 6 to 9 feet. The battle lasted anywhere from 19 to 30 hours, but park biologist Skip Snow, who is compiling data on pythons in the park, put it at 24 hours from the time the creatures were first spotted, already engaged.
Although it's not clear which animal struck first, Snow and his colleagues believe the gator, an opportunistic sort that will eat just about anything that wanders by, probably hit the swimming snake.
Gators are frequently seen stalking and killing food. Pythons, though they have been seen in the park since the 1980s, are more elusive. But in the past few years, they have begun showing up often enough that biologists believe they might be breeding in large enough numbers to pose a threat to other species.
One worrisome question is whether anything in the park can prey on a species that ranks among the largest snakes in the world.
The bout provides one anecdotal answer: Gators might at least give it a go.
The gator clamped its maw just below the snake's head and seemed to control the fight, diving for long periods, resurfacing and swimming from place to place. The snake fought on and off, sometimes wrapping its powerful body around the gator, at other times just floating limp, looking lifeless.
For gators, carrying around prey for a day isn't unusual, Snow said. They do it to protect their meal from other gators.
Snow once saw a gator in Shark Valley carry ``a rotten, stinky old otter carcass around for days.''
That makes the conclusion to the battle all the more stunning. It was a draw.
A camper witnessed the end the morning after it began. When another gator began sniffing around, the gator opened its jaws, possibly to protect itself. The snake, Snow says, thrashed to life and scurried off.
Manresa can't believe it survived for long.
''If you see the photos, that snake is done for,'' he said.
But Snow says large snakes, equipped with powerful constricting muscles, have crawled away after being run over by cars. And he has asked Anhinga Trail staffers to be on the lookout for any signs that a large animal has died nearby -- like circling vultures.
''So far,'' he said, ``nothing like that has come to light.''
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[Scott W]

another photo
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[Scott W]

Source - Florida Herald October 05 2005It's alien versus predator in Glades creature clash

A giant exotic snake's fatal mistake of trying to swallow an alligator has provided scientists with strange new evidence that pythons are continuing to spread in the Everglades.

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 six-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.

As an added touch of the macabre, the snake's head was missing.

For scientists, exactly how the clash occurred is a compelling curiosity. More importantly, the latest and most extraordinary encounter provides disturbing evidence that giant exotic snakes, which can top 20 feet in length and kill by squeezing the life out of prey, have not only invaded the Everglades but 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 been tracking the spread of the snakes.

Pythons, likely abandoned by pet owners, have been seen in the Everglades since the 1980s. But in the past 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 big, scary predators also raises questions about threats to native species and whether anything indigenous -- gators, for starters -- might be capable of consuming and potentially controlling one of the world's largest snake species.

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

The discovery was important for a number of reasons.

LIVING ANYWHERE

For one, it showed the snakes are capable of living anywhere in the Everglades, Snow said. Most earlier finds have been on park fringes, roads or parking lots.

''This is the first we have documented Burmese pythons really in the heart of the slough,'' Snow said.

It also confirmed that snakes and gators, while typically consuming less troublesome mammals, turtles and birds, have an appetite for each other -- at least when the opportunity presents itself.

The first observed encounter in the park occurred three years ago when awestruck onlookers at the popular Anhinga Trail boardwalk witnessed a tussle between a 10- to 15-foot snake and six- to nine-foot gator. That fight, which lasted an estimated 24 hours, ended in an apparent draw, with both swimming off and vanishing.

Earlier this year, Snow documented a gator killing and consuming a python. The latest encounter showed that a hungry adult snake can eat a sizable gator.

Such clashes, though spawned by damaging incursion by an exotic species, can't help but fascinate both the public and scientists, said Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor and expert on crocodiles and gators in the Glades.

''We've got not only two big things, but two charismatic mega-fauna -- the Burmese python, invader of the Everglades, and the American alligator, monarch of the Everglades,'' he said.

Mazzotti 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.

ASKING THE EXPERTS

He was so intrigued that he e-mailed photos and notes to other experts around the country.

So far, several theories abound, none of them pretty and all speculative because once on the scene, Snow quickly abandoned plans to load the bloated, badly decomposed carcasses on the chopper.

''We decided there was no way we were going to do that,'' he said. ``Something was going to go wrong and it was going to be nasty.''

Instead, he performed a ''floating'' necropsy in the water.

While unusual, it's not unheard of for a snake to consume prey that proves too hard or large to digest. Things like claws, hooves or bones can damage the snake's internal organs. The bulk of a victim can put pressure on the snake's lungs, essentially suffocating it from within.

Slowed by the extra weight, the snake might have been attacked by another gator, which could explain a missing python head.

Joe Wasilewski, a South Miami-Dade biologist and expert gator and crocodile tracker, examined the photos and surmised the gator wasn't quite dead when the snake swallowed it snout-first.

That's not uncommon, he said. ''That [gator] could have been kicking its hind legs and ruptured the snake's stomach wall,'' Wasilewski said.

DEAD MOVES

Mazzotti said a similar scenario could have happened even if the gator were dead because of a quirk of its nervous system. Until a gator's spinal cord is severed and literally stirred into jelly with a special tool, he said, ``a dead alligator gives a remarkably good imitation of being alive. One of the things they do is they move their legs like they're walking. Those claws are pretty sharp. It could tear through the [snake's] skin.''

Mazzotti said it's also plausible the snake scavenged a dead gator. Then time, decay and heat could explain what happened next: a nasty blowout of the snake body.

''You've got a deteriorating carcass, you've got a buildup of gases, you've got sharp claw points . . . ,'' he said.

Snow said a few wags even suggested the deaths were weird enough to fit into the plot of the new TV series Invasion, which involves aliens descending into the Everglades from strange lights during a hurricane.

The carcasses were found a week after the show debuted, he said. ``I've heard some jokes that maybe it was the lights.''
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[Scott W]

well, I still believe it ate the gator, died due to either injury (from killing the gator) or perhaps another gator attack.

Why the head was missing, well not too sure, perhaps if people found it they took the head as a souvineer?
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[Scott W]

video clip here http://us.video.aol.com/video.index.adp?mode=2&guideContext=65.491&pmmsid=1413342
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[Scott W]

Anyone else think it might be a rock python rather than burmese?

One source quoted a Retic but I'm 100% sure that's wrong.
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