People's ignorance is appalling! My coworkers know I breed Ball Pythons. I talk about them all the time and I have showed a lot of pictures at work. Still many people keep asking me if I am not afraid they might grow so big that one day they might hurt me, or that if they bite me I'd have to go to the hospital.



People think that ALL pythons grow as big as Retics, and MANY people think that ALL snakes are venomous. Shows like this one contribute to the misinformation and the confusion. Of course the hype about the giant man-eating super snakes roaming the Everglades doesn't help either. Well, at least lately they have reduced the estimated number of pythons in the wild in South Florida. They used to say that there were at least 100,000 pythons in the Everglades. The latest I've heard puts their number in the 30,000.



Also, in all these shows about the "python invasion" they stress the "fact" that pythons don't have predators in the Florida swamps and have even showed another snake (can't remember if it was an indigo or a kingsnake) trying to kill and eat a baby reticulate python. The baby escaped, and they point out that baby retics don't have natural predators. as if all attempts of predation (by any predatory species) are always successful...



Baby pythons are a tasty morsel to many species in the Everglades. Snapping turtles, indigos, kingsnakes, alligators and crocodiles, even bullfrogs and largemouth bass, all kinds of birds like herons, storks, egrets, eagles, ospreys and hawks, and mammals like otters, racoons, and foxes would eat a baby python. Even adult pythons (maybe not the REALLY big ones) can be killed by alligators and crocodiles...



One of my bosses saw pictures of baby ball pythons I had posted on the wall of my cubicle at work, and say "Oh, so you are one of the people responsible for the pythons in the Everglades?" I had to stop him right there and tried to explain the REAL facts about pythons, and that I am not an irresponsible person that would NEVER release an exotic species to the wild, but I doubt he believed or understood me (He is an a***ole anyway).
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Sed et serpens erat callidior cunctis animantibus terrae quae fecerat Dominus Deus...

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