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The secondly - largest Burmese python ever discovered in South Florida has been captured after give people sat on the tremendous snake , which was found stretched out across a route in the Big Cypress National Preserve .

ab initio , the python - hunters thought the female snake was an alligator due to its size of it . " It was more than a ophidian , it was a monster , " conservationist Mike Elfenbein toldCBS News .

a burmese python

Burmese pythons (Python bivittatus) are invasive in Florida.

After realize it was a Burmese python ( Python bivittatus ) , one of the men , Carter Gavlock , grab the snake in the grass ’s tail to encumber the animal , but it dragged him by . " That was a big error because the snake damn near demand him into the canal . There was nothing he could do to cease it , " Elfenbein said . Eventually , five men had to sit on the serpent to capture it .

The python weighed 198 pounds ( 90 kilograms ) and measure out 17.2 fundament ( 5.2 meters ) , cook it the second - heavy ever caught in Florida . Theheaviest Burmese pythonwas captured in 2022 and weighed 215 pound ( 98 kg ) .

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A Burmese python in Florida hangs from a tree branch at dusk.

Burmese python are native to southeastern Asia and considered an invading species in Florida . These snakes have a magnanimous nurture population within and around the Everglades and have proveddevastating to native wildlife , despite drive over late old age to reduce their numbers .

Pythons are hard to discover , which makes population estimate difficult , but tens of one thousand of the snakes are conceive to live in Florida . Researchfrom the U.S. Geological Survey publish this year base that more than 10,000 Burmese Python have been capture in the state in the past five year .

— grim video reveals the minute a 5 - foot gator corpse was cut from the catgut of a drained python

Man stands holding a massive rat.

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— snake in the grass strangle on invasive Pisces the size of it of its caput salvage by scientist

Nobody knows exactlyhow the metal money first go far in the state . In the 1970s , the animals were popular in the preferred trade and may have been released both circumstantially and by design . Burmese pythons began to thrive in Florida in the eighties and 1990s and havespreadacross almost all of southern Florida .

A photograph of a newly discovered mosasaur fossil in a human hand.

limit the spread of Burmese python is a key destination of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission , and it is legal for hoi polloi to hunt and kill them humanely .

Earlier this year , a16 - foot - farseeing ( 5 m ) Burmese pythonwas catch and kill in the Florida Everglades with a clutch pedal of 60 nut that were days from being place .

a royal python curled around a branch in the jungle

Person holding a snakes head while using a pointed plastic object to reveal a fang.

a closeup of a fossil

Sunda island pit viper ( Trimeresurus insularis ) on a branch. Photo taken in Jakarta.

a photo of the skin beginning to shed from a snake�s face

King cobra faces camera.

a person holds a GLP-1 injector

A man with light skin and dark hair and beard leans back in a wooden boat, rowing with oars into the sea

an MRI scan of a brain

A photograph of two of Colossal�s genetically engineered wolves as pups.

An illustration of Jupiter showing its magnetic field

A reconstruction of a wrecked submarine