Photo in the News: Python Bursts After Eating Gator

Updated September 5, 2006—Unfortunately for a 13-foot (4-meter) Burmese python in Florida's Everglades National Park, eating the enemy seems to have caused the voracious reptile to bust a gut—literally.

Wildlife researchers with the South Florida Natural Resources Center found the dead, headless python in October 2005 after it apparently tried to digest a 6-foot-long (2-meter-long) American alligator. The mostly intact dead gator was found sticking out of a hole in the midsection of the python, and wads of gator skin were found in the snake's gastrointestinal tract.

The gruesome discovery suggests that the python's feisty last meal might have been simply too much for it to handle.

An alternative theory will be put forth in a September 16 Explorer episode on the National Geographic Channel.

(National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society, which is part owner of the National Geographic Channel.)

An animated recreation of the python-alligator battle suggests that the python might have survived its massive meal but that a second gator came to the rescue and bit off the snake's head. The force of the tussle, the new theory says, is what caused the python to burst.

But even scientists associated with the show aren't so sure the new theory holds water.

Wayne King, reptile curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, cites the relatively clean decapitation of the snake. "Alligators, they don't bite off a piece," he told McClatchey Newspapers. "They grab hold, then they roll and spin. If one grabs you by the arm, normally they wrench the arm off, or if they grab you by the buttocks, they'll rip away a chunk of meat."

Clashes between alligators and pythons have been on the rise in the Everglades for the past 20 years. Unwanted pet snakes dumped in the swamp have thrived, and the Asian reptile is now a major competitor in the alligator's native ecosystem. (See "Huge, Freed Pet Pythons Invade Florida Everglades.")

"Clearly if [pythons] can kill an alligator, they can kill other species," Frank Mazzotti, a University of Florida wildlife professor, told the Associated Press. "There had been some hope that alligators can control Burmese pythons. … This [event] indicates to me it's going to be an even draw."

—Victoria Gilman

[NatGeo] Photo in the News: Python Eats Pregnant Sheep

September 15, 2006—A fresh lamb dinner might sound like a manageable meal for an 18-foot-long (5.5-meter-long) python. But maybe the hungry snake should have waited for the lamb to be born.

Last week firefighters in the Malaysian village of Kampung Jabor were called in to remove the bloated snake (pictured) from a roadway. The reptile had swallowed an entire pregnant sheep and was too full to slither away and digest its supersize meal.

But the stress of being captured likely triggered the python to purge—it eventually regurgitated the dead ewe.

Pythons are constrictors, meaning they rely on strength, not venom, to kill their prey. About once a week the large snakes ambush a likely meal, grab hold with backward-curving teeth, and wrap around the victim, suffocating it to death. Pythons then open their hinged jaws wide to swallow their prey whole.

Sometimes, though, it seems like the voracious reptiles don't think before they snack. This particular snake isn't the first python to get a tough lesson in the dangers of swallowing oversize prey.

In July a pet Burmese python in Idaho required life-saving surgery to remove a queen-size electric blanket from its digestive tract (see photo). And last October a python in the Florida Everglades apparently busted a gut when it tried to make a meal of a 6-foot-long (2-meter-long) American alligator (see photo).

—Victoria Gilman

Elephant Massacre Revealed in Chad - NatGeo

Warning: This gallery contains graphic images.

The remains of slaughtered elephants lie amidst the trees near Zakouma National Park in southeastern Chad. Mike Fay, a Wildlife Conservation Society biologist on a National Geographic Society-funded expedition, spotted the animals in early August—two of about a hundred dead elephants seen during a recent aerial survey just outside the park's borders (National Geographic News is part of the National Geographic Society).

Although international ivory trade has been banned since 1989, elephant tusks are hot commodities on the black market. The tusks are actually elongated incisors. Since about a third of their length is inside the skull, the tusks cannot be fully removed while the animal is alive. Poachers therefore shoot into an elephant herd, cut off the trunks of any fallen animals, and hack out the tusks with an axe.

Fay, who was also on assignment for National Geographic magazine, warns that his discovery is evidence of a major poaching problem on the borders of one of the elephants' last central African strongholds. The animals were massacred, his team reports, as they crossed the protected park's borders during the wet season in search of forage.

In 2005 the Chadian government invited Fay and his team to make a dry season census of elephants in Zakouma National Park. The complete count yielded more than 3,800 individuals. But a follow-up survey in 2006 yielded only 3,020 animals, suggesting that either a large herd was missed in the count—or that hundreds of animals had possibly been killed in a year's time.

In a follow-up wet-season survey, Fay and his team found a hundred poached carcasses over an eight-day period. "Even for someone who's been around for 20 years watching elephants be killed in that area, that's a lot of elephants," Fay said of the massacre.

This is not the first time Fay has encountered elephant massacres or poachers. In 1996 the biologist came across a slaughter of 300 elephants north of Odzala National Park in the Northern Republic of Congo.

A herd of elephants congregates at a water hole in Zakouma National Park. The animals' days are generally spent foraging for food in the surrounding savanna. From May to October—the rainy season in Chad—elephants cross the park's borders in search of better forage.

"During the wet season more elephants may be outside of the park boundaries than inside," Fay told National Geographic News. "The corridors they use to leave have been known for a long time, but no one had surveyed outside the park in the wet season."

It did not take Fay long to uncover evidence of large-scale killings on the fringes of Zakouma. His team was in the air less than two hours before they began spotting dead elephants.

A close view of an elephant carcass near Zakouma National Park shows that the face was removed—evidence that the animal was killed by poachers for its tusks. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna (CITES) estimates that poachers kill 4,000 elephants each year.

Both male and female African elephants have tusks, which are elongated teeth that can grow to up to 9.8 feet (3 meters) long. Before trade bans were put in place, demand for ivory was so great that elephant populations plummeted from an estimated 1.3 million animals in 1970 to just 600,000 in 1989.

During their August survey, Fay and his crew caught glimpses of horsemen who might have been responsible for the elephant massacre.

In one encounter, the crew flew over a suspected poachers' camp several times. On the third pass, a man with an assault rifle fired at the plane as it passed by just 150 feet (46 meters) above the ground. No one was injured in that attack, and Fay managed to snap a photo of the gunner.

The next morning Fay and his team found the carcasses of seven recently killed elephants not far from the campsite. The poachers "are still hammering away," Fay said, "and they will kill every single elephant if [the animals] are not protected."

—Photograph by Mike Fay/NGS