re: Florida "Glades Boys" capture a record-breaking 19 feet long 125 pound Burmese python

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A new camera developed by University of Central Florida researchers and the nonprofit company Imec uses a special wavelength of light to expose the snake as an ethereal slither against black, a ghostly coil in the river of grass.

Because pythons are cold-blooded and adopt the temperature of their surroundings, thermal imaging proved useless in hunting the invasive species.

But the camera uses a near infrared 850 nanometer wavelength (humans see between 400 and 700 nanometers) to detect the snakes, which reflect light at that level differently than the flora and waterways of South Florida.

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Fried python is good eating

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there's a pretty sound theory that ground zero for the explosion of pythons in the everglades was a pet shop down there somewhere that got completely annihilated during Hurricane Andrew. apparently it was chock full of the damn things, which makes sense that that is what would start a population spread because so many of them were released in close proximity to one another. otherwise it would just be onesies and twosies across the area which seems unlikely would lead to such a huge population increase because the snakes wouldnt be able to find eachother to breed.

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