The Big WrapThis matchup between a Florida gator and Burmese python shows the snake's tenacity in hunting big game. Exotic snakes are making inroads in domestic climes, as described in the Science & the Public blog. USGS Some were pets whose bodies and appetites apparently got too big for their owners to support. Most are probably descendants of released pets. Today, thousands of really big non-native snakes -- we're talking boa constrictors, anacondas and pythons -- slither wild in southern Florida. And there's nothing holding them in the Sunshine State. Which is why a report that was released today contends they pose moderate to high ecological threats to states on three U.S. coasts. Indeed, the homelands of these snakes share climatic features with large portions of the United States -- territory currently inhabited by some 120 million Americans. Based on comparisons of the temperatures, rainfall and land cover found in the snakes' native range, it's possible that these slithering behemoths could stake claims to territory as far north as coastal Delaware and Oregon. Or so Gordon Rodda and Robert Reed of the U.S. Geological Survey observe in a 300-page assessment. As North America's climate warms, the two predict, these invaders might even expand that range -- by the end of this century becoming permanent residents of the Midwest. The red states contain climate and land features that might make them hospitable to giant, invasive snakes.
The Big WrapThis matchup between a Florida gator and Burmese python shows the snake's tenacity in hunting big game. Exotic snakes are making inroads in domestic climes, as described in the Science & the Public blog. USGS
Some were pets whose bodies and appetites apparently got too big for their owners to support. Most are probably descendants of released pets. Today, thousands of really big non-native snakes -- we're talking boa constrictors, anacondas and pythons -- slither wild in southern Florida. And there's nothing holding them in the Sunshine State. Which is why a report that was released today contends they pose moderate to high ecological threats to states on three U.S. coasts.
Indeed, the homelands of these snakes share climatic features with large portions of the United States -- territory currently inhabited by some 120 million Americans. Based on comparisons of the temperatures, rainfall and land cover found in the snakes' native range, it's possible that these slithering behemoths could stake claims to territory as far north as coastal Delaware and Oregon. Or so Gordon Rodda and Robert Reed of the U.S. Geological Survey observe in a 300-page assessment. As North America's climate warms, the two predict, these invaders might even expand that range -- by the end of this century becoming permanent residents of the Midwest.
The red states contain climate and land features that might make them hospitable to giant, invasive snakes.
Then again, as the learned producers behind the Anaconda series of movies have shown us, we can never be TOO worried about giant killer snakes.
A snake from South America that never made it up the isthmus to the Gulf Coast of North America is not a native species because its from "The Americas". Ecosystems are more specific than that. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
A threat to three US coasts AND to Mexico, Central America and, eventually, to South America as well.
But presumbly it wouldn't be able to survive somewhere on the way down, or it would have made it up to the U.S. by itself anyway.
