Huge python wrestled by hunters at 1 a.m. sets Florida record. ‘It was a fight’
A record-setting Burmese python was captured in remote South Florida, heightening fears that the invasive snakes are feasting out of control on native wildlife.
The massive female was discovered around 1 a.m. on Monday, July 10, by hunters in Big Cypress National Preserve, about 45 miles west of Miami.
“Interested to learn the full scope of the size of their catch, the team contacted the Conservancy of Southwest Florida’s python team to collect measurements,” the Naples-based conservancy said in a news release.
“The results: 19 feet ... and 125 pounds, officially the longest ever documented. The longest Burmese python previously recorded in Florida was 18 feet, 9 inches.”
A group of python hunters found the snake along U.S. 41 near Monroe Station, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission reports.
Dramatic video shared on Instagram shows the snake on multiple attempts tried to bite 22-year-old Jake Waleri as he wrestled with it in the middle of the road.
Waleri called the snake “an absolute monster” and says the group battled it “for about three minutes” before he got a grip on its head.
“It was a fight,” Waleri says in a video shared on YouTube. “It’s the only snake I’ve ever seen that scared me enough that I just didn’t know what to do.”
The hunters donated much of the carcass to the conservancy for study. The conservancy has its own Burmese python removal team, and it holds a 2022 state record for catching the heaviest python found in Florida: 215 pounds.
Conservancy Biologist Ian Easterling says the 19-foot snake may count as the longest Burmese python on record anywhere.
“We had a feeling that these snakes get this big and now we have clear evidence,” Easterling said in the release.
“Her genetic material may prove valuable for an eventual understanding of the founding population of South Florida. We will be collecting measurements and samples that will be distributed to our research collaborators.”
The conservancy is an environmental nonprofit working to control the spread of pythons. It is credited with removing “more than 30,000 pounds of python” from a 150-square-mile area in southwestern Florida.
Burmese pythons are native to “India, lower China, the Malay Peninsula and some islands of the East Indies,” according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
The snakes were brought to the U.S. as part of the exotic pet trade and made their way into the wild “by way of an intentional or accidental release,” the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reports.
This story was originally published July 13, 2023 at 12:25 PM with the headline "Huge python wrestled by hunters at 1 a.m. sets Florida record. ‘It was a fight’."