Common Name: Burmese python
Scientific Name: Python molurus bivittatus
You'll typically see the Burmese pythons in one of the presentations held in Safari Canyon (as long as the weather is warm enough.)
Description: This large snake exhibits a bold dark brown pattern on a lighter background. Females grow larger than males with some females reported in excess of twenty feet and weighing close to 135 kg.
Range: India and Indo-China
Habitat: Terrestrial, although climbing and swimming are reported.
Diet: Carnivorous: birds and mammals, occasionally other reptiles. The python strikes and anchors onto the prey with its teeth. The giant coils quickly wrap around the prey. Once the coils are tight, the snake waits for the prey to exhale. Once the prey's chest is reduced in diameter, the snake coils tighter preventing the prey from breathing in fresh oxygen. This process will suffocate the prey without the need to physically crush it. One 5.5 meter Indian python is reported to have eaten a leopard while sustaining only minimal wounds.
Social Life: Pythons are egg layers. After laying, females coil around the eggs as shown below. The mother is actually keeping the eggs warm. Slight twitches use energy and create heat. Such coiled females have temperatures several degrees Celsius higher than normal.
Conservation: The bivittatus subspecies of the Indian python is currently listed as Appendix II of the CITES.
Recommended LINKS & BOOKS
If you ever get bitten, you (and the snake) will be glad you read this info first.
Melissa Kaplan's Info Page on Burmese pythons.
Tales of Giant Snakes : A Historical Natural History of Anacondas and Pythons: A recent text debunking some of the myths along with a few sobering tales of what the giant snakes are capable of. The text is authored by John Murphy, a herpetologist at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, and Robert Henderson, curator of herpetology at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Experienced field biologists, together they have also dived into the past two centuries of legend and lore and exploration to produce a fascinating natural history of the four species of snake known to exceed twenty feet in length.