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The recent capture of a 17-foot, 198-pound python in Florida generated national headlines, mostly because it was the second-heaviest python ever caught in the Sunshine State. The main image showed five men posing with the dead python, which, as one meteorologist remarked, boasted a head “the size of a football.” Such captures are indeed noteworthy. Burmese pythons are highly invasive and threaten native wildlife. They do not belong in Florida and the state encourages hunting and removal. But what people rarely see, because the swamp-dwelling reptiles are nocturnal, are giant live pythons roaming in broad daylight.

The crashed plane’s wing jetted out of the alligator and python-invested swamps of the Everglades just long enough for the pilot to survive. . OKEECHOBEE, FLORIDA — After nine hours waiting on the wing of his downed plane in the Florida Everglades, a pilot was rescued by Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue. He was the only person aboard. The plane was registered to a flight school in Homestead, Florida but the school called 911 after they lost contact with the pilot. The plane was a single-engine Cessna Skyhawk 172M that began experiencing trouble close to I-75 in South Broward County. A...

This is the shocking moment a snake hunter wrestled a 19ft Burmese python said to be the longest ever found in the US. The video, taken in the Big Cypress National Preserve, Florida, shows snake hunter Jake Waleri, 22, grab the 125lb python by the neck after it lunges at him with opens jaws. Mr Waleri grapples with the python, which is as long as an adult giraffe is tall, and wrestles it to the ground as onlookers exclaim: 'Oh my God! Let's go!' Another man asks: 'Have you got tape on you, I know you carry tape,' as they...

Burmese pythons are killing off mammals that would normally keep Florida's rat population in check. A new study found that parts of the Florida Everglades were becoming overrun with rats as a result. It may be good news for the cotton rats, but it could spell serious danger for humans. Florida's Burmese pythons have been known to prey on birds, reptiles, deer, and even alligators. But one thing they don't seem to have a taste for is cotton rats. And the rats are thriving because of it. ... cotton rats "dominate the community" in parts of the Florida Everglades where...

The new fossil flower, named Valviloculus pleristaminis, belongs to the order Laurales, its closest affinities being with the families Monimiaceae and Atherospermataceae. The specimen of Valviloculus pleristaminis has an egg-shaped, hollow floral cup (part of the flower from which the stamens emanate); an outer layer consisting of six petal-like components known as tepals; and two-chamber anthers, with pollen sacs that split open via laterally hinged valves. It became encased in amber on the supercontinent of Gondwana and rafted on a continental plate some 6,450 km (4,000 miles) across the ocean from Australia to Southeast Asia. Geologists have been debating just...

That’s a heck of a meal! The Conservancy of Southwest Florida documented a Burmese python eating a white-tailed deer that weighed more than the python itself. According to The Conservancy of Southwest Florida, which does research on python behavior and habitats in order to help control the population of the invasive species, this is believed to be the largest predator-to-prey ratio documented for the Burmese python, and possibly for any species of python. The findings will be published in the March 2018 issue of Herpetological Review. This snake, an 11-foot female, was found in Collier Seminole State Park on April...

South Florida’s most aggressive invasive species has found a new way to grab headlines: slither atop a research platform in Biscayne Bay. Last month, a kayaker spied a 9-foot Burmese python wrapped around part of a platform more than a half mile offshore in Biscayne National Park usually inhabited by sunning cormorants. The sighting was a first for the park and another worrisome sign that the state’s out-of-control pythons are getting more adept at inhabiting the state’s salty fringes. In September, state wildlife biologists confirmed for the first time that the snakes are now breeding in the Keys.

Myanmar's ultra-nationalist Buddhist monk Wirathu has called the UN's special rapporteur for human rights in Burma a "whore" during a public address in Yangon. The leader of the controversial 969 nationalist movement hit back at Yanghee Lee for an earlier comment in defence of the stateless Rohingya Muslims, who are persecuted in the country's western Rakhine state. "We have already made public our Race Protection Law, but without even studying it, this bitch [kaungma in Burmese] keeps on complaining about how it is against human rights!" Wirathu shouted. "Can this whore really be from a respectable family background?" he asked...

Burmese python invasive to Everglades. The Burmese python, one of the largest snakes in the world, is running amok in Florida. Well, more like slithering amok. So much so that on Saturday, state officials kick off a month-long competition designed to remove as many of the colossal constrictors from the Everglades as possible. More than 600 people have signed up for the Python Challenge, according to Carli Segelson, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which organized the event. A cash prize goes to the hunter who captures -- dead or alive -- the most Burmese pythons,...

Four leading House Republicans, citing national security concerns, are urging Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to block the sale of a Wyoming-based uranium mine to an arm of the Russian government's main nuclear agency. The lawmakers are raising alarm over the proposed sale of a Powder River Basin, Wyoming-based uranium processing facility operated by Uranium One USA, a Canadian-based company, to Atomredmetzoloto, a subsidiary of the Russian government agency Rosatom, according to a letter obtained Tuesday by The Washington Times. The sale was first announced on Aug. 31, and the lawmakers claim that it could give Moscow control of up...

All he did was ask to go home. The last time the Burmese slave made the same request, he was beaten almost to death. But after being gone eight years and forced to work on a boat in faraway Indonesia, Myint Naing was willing to risk everything to see his mother again. His nights were filled with dreams of her, and time was slowly stealing her face from his memory. So he threw himself on the ground and roped his arms around the captain’s legs to beg for freedom. The Thai skipper barked loud enough for all to hear that...

This week deadly armed clashes near Burma’s border with China ended a nearly two-decade-old ceasefire between the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Burma’s government. About 10,000 people have fled to refugee camps along the Chinese border and 215 Chinese workers from the Datang United Hydropower Developing Co. returned home after the KIA captured a Chinese-built and operated hydropower plant last week. A KIA spokesperson told the Thailand-based Irrawaddy that the uprising began when the government reneged on an agreement to share electricity generated from the region’s Chinese-built hydropower plants with local people. “This electricity is now going to China, not...

Charles "Jason" Darnell, 33, and Jaren Ashley Hare, 21, face third-degree murder and manslaughter charges stemming from the 2009 death of their daughter...Prosecutors will allege that "Gypsy," a 260 centimeter albino Burmese python, escaped from its glass tank, slithered down the hall and attacked the child in her crib. Darnell told detectives he found the snake in the hallway a day before the attack and had placed it back inside its tank and put a quilt on top of it. He also admitted that the snake had gotten out of the tank - which did not have a lock on...

The bear that recently killed a caretaker in a Cleveland suburb was the latest example of animal violence in a state that has some of the nation's weakest restrictions on exotic pets and among the highest number of injuries and deaths caused by them. The death in Ohio and attacks elsewhere - including the maiming of a Connecticut woman by her friend's pet chimpanzee and a 2-year-old Florida girl squeezed to death by her family's python - highlight that the patchwork of federal, state and local laws on keeping dangerous wild animals at home has holes. After a friend's 200-pound...

Giant pythons capable of swallowing a dog and even an alligator are rapidly making south Florida their home, potentially threatening other southeastern states, a study said. "Pythons are likely to colonize anywhere alligators live, including north Florida, Georgia and Louisiana," said Frank Mazzotti, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences professor, in his two-year study. The pythons thriving in Florida are mostly Burmese pythons from Myanmar that were brought over as pets and then turned loose in the wild. From 2002-2005, 201 of the beasts were caught by state authorities, but in the last two years the number...

For the second time in two years, a 16-foot python has been found in the wild west of Vero Beach -- this time killed by a large roadside bush mower on a canal bank along 58th Avenue. On Friday, Jesse Parker was mowing for the county along a large canal south of 12th Street and hit what he thought was bricks. "When I backed up, a head popped up. It was huge," ... "It is lucky this happened," Vero Beach Animal Control Officer Bruce Dangerfield said Monday. He said the snake could have grown 25- to 30-feet long. Though pythons...

The monks have vowed to continue their action Lorries with loudspeakers have been driving through Burma's main city of Rangoon warning residents to stop anti-government protests.The broadcasts threatened that "action will be taken against those who violate this order". But hundreds of monks and civilians defied the threats and began fresh protests at the Shwedagon pagoda. On Monday, there were protests in at least 25 towns, with tens of thousands of people marching in Rangoon. Several military trucks are now parked near Shwedagon pagoda, which has been the focus of the protests. Eyewitnesses said several hundred monks gathered at...

Burmese pythons are particularly popular for about $40 wholesale or just under $100 in a pet store, at about the size of a ruler. You feed a little one mice, and then rats, and then as it continues to grow in size and appetite, you offer up chickens and rabbits, the experts say. You watch your snakeling graduate in about three years to a length of 10 or 12 feet, or longer. Ultimately it can reach 20 feet, and the heavyweights tip the scales at about 300 pounds, and live to about 25 years. Their defacatory production is renowned. And...

Scientists in Florida are puzzling over a 13-foot Burmese python that scarfed down a 6-foot alligator before its stomach ruptured. The snake apparently tried to swallow the gator whole -- and then exploded. Scientists stumbled upon the gory remains last week. The species have battled with increasing frequency -- scientists have documented four encounters in the last three years... "Encounters like that are almost never seen in the wild. ... And here we are, it's happened for the fourth time," Mazzotti said. In the other cases, the alligator won or the battle was an apparent draw. "They were probably evenly...

A 14-foot python bit its handler and tried to drag her into its cage during a show at an aquarium, and wouldn't release the woman until a police officer zapped the reptile with a stun gun. Alison Cobianchi, 18, was taking Chloe, a Burmese python, out of her cage for the daily snake presentation Saturday at the Tarpon Springs Aquarium when the snake wrapped itself around her arm and waist. Visitors and aquarium employees kept the nonvenomous snake from pulling Cobianchi into the cage, but couldn't make it release its grip. Police were called to help. "We either had to...