Florida is home to hundreds of thousands of Burmese pythons, far from their native habitat in Southeast Asia. In response, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is holding a free online course, with the first session being tomorrow, to teach residents how to identify, locate, and humanely euthanize these invasive snakes.
This class is especially important ahead of the annual Florida Python Challenge starting Aug. 9. If participants kill a native snake, they will be disqualified.
Dr. Andrew Durso, a snake biologist from Florida Gulf Coast University, emphasizes the importance of proper identification.
"To me, as a snake expert, none of them look very much like pythons," Durso said. "But I can tell you firsthand that most people are very, very bad at identifying snakes. I've gotten many requests to identify pythons that turned out to be corn snakes or other native species."
Losing native snake species can significantly harm our ecosystem. Durso explains that snakes play a vital role in controlling populations of rodents and frogs, and some even consume invasive cane toads.
"Many people have grown up thinking that the only good snake is a dead snake. But that isn't true. Snakes have an important impact on our ecosystem. They also don't want anything to do with you; most snakes would rather completely avoid you," Durso said.
Some native snake species include the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, black racers, and Florida cottonmouths.
Pythons, however, have unique identifying features. They have dark, greenish-brown blotches, which are distinct from most common native species, and they're very large. The longest python recorded by FWC in Florida was 19 feet long and weighed 125.56 pounds.
For those interested in the Python Patrol class, registration is available on the FWC's website .