Attack of the Giant Pythons
The Smithsonian's noted bird sleuth, Carla Dove, eyes smelly globs to identify victims in Florida
- By Arcynta Ali Childs
- Smithsonian magazine, April 2011, Subscribe
Carla Dove, head of the National Museum of Natural History’s Feather Identification Lab, is working on a mystery. Surrounded by racks of embalmed birds in jars, she digs through the contents of a red cooler, pushing aside paper and ice packs and finally opening a plastic garbage bag. Inside are ten samples of stomach contents from Burmese pythons captured in the Florida Everglades.
The majority of Dove’s work involves identifying birds hit by planes, a long-standing problem for aviation. “I mean, Wilbur Wright had a bird strike,” Dove says. Using DNA analysis and feather identification, she helps airports figure out which species to deter. Dove identified Canada geese as the cause of the emergency landing of US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in 2009.
But a few years ago, Dove received a call from Skip Snow, a wildlife biologist at Everglades National Park, with a different kind of bird identification assignment. “Carla, we’ve got a problem down here and we need your help,” Dove recalls him saying. Burmese pythons, an invasive species, were preying on wildlife in the park at an alarming rate.
“I realized right away that this was an important study,” Dove says. The snakes, first reported in the park in 1979, are likely descended from released or escaped exotic pets. Their current population is in the thousands, and they are proliferating rapidly. “The first way to prove the danger they’re causing to the environment is to figure out what they’re eating and how much of it they’re eating,” Dove says. So Snow began sending Dove stomach samples from captured pythons.
Identifying any birds in such samples is messy, time-consuming work—a task Dove embraces with gusto. “My job is not so glamorous,” she says, picking up a brown glob in a plastic sandwich bag. She washes it in warm water, then dries it with compressed air: “Feathers are made of keratin, like your hair, so they are very durable and easy to clean and dry.” She examines them under a microscope, looking for fine variations in color, size or microstructure that tell her which taxonomic group a given bird belongs to.
Dove then takes the sample into the museum’s collection of 620,000 specimens from more than 8,000 species of birds and looks for a match; it can take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. “This is the way we’ve been doing it for 50 years,” she says. “We have DNA now, but DNA is not going to help us in this case”—the python’s digestive system has destroyed or contaminated the genetic material—“so you really have to rely on those basic skills of identifying things based on your experience and your knowledge.”
In the past year, Dove has identified 25 species of birds from the stomach contents of 85 Burmese pythons. The tally includes such endangered species as the limpkin and the wood stork—which stands more than three feet tall. “These snakes are growing bigger and eating bigger things,” Dove says, including alligators and deer. (In their native habitat, Southeast Asia and southern China, they even eat small leopards.) The largest snake captured in the park was almost 17 feet long. Dove’s research, published in the March issue of the Wilson Journal of Ornithology, is essential for figuring out how to deal with these predators, Snow says.
There is no quick fix. Snow envisions a three-pronged program—education, prevention (keeping new exotic snakes out of the Everglades) and suppression (killing as many pythons as possible). Dove’s research will help bolster support for and refine the effort, he says: “We may be quite surprised to find the degree that these animals have already threatened the integrity of Everglades National Park.”
In the lab, Dove has identified the new sample as a pied-billed grebe, a small bird that spends most of its time on lakes or ponds diving for food. The research has made a big impression on her. “This is pretty close to the most memorable work I’ve done,” Dove says, “because it’s been really smelly.”
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Related topics: Birds Snakes Overpopulation Florida
Additional Sources
“Birds Consumed by the Invasive Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus) in Everglades National Park, Florida, USA,” Carla J. Dove et al., The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, March 2011
Comments (18)
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ghana is my happy home
Posted by derrick on January 30,2013 | 07:42 AM
i love your article it is fabtastic cool kaleb
Posted by kaleb on January 29,2013 | 01:40 PM
What about paying bounties on the snakes? Pay enough and hunters will exterminate them like they almost did the alligators. Since they hunt by heat source, how about warm inanimate bait (pulsating, vibrating, brething sounds, whatever attracts them) with --- poison tip barbs, toothed jaws, snare wires, explosives ---for these vermin anything should be considered and employed immediately.
Posted by John on October 19,2012 | 10:57 PM
I believe the word is "speciesism"
Posted by william z pope on April 18,2012 | 07:29 PM
Here's one article. The Nature Conservancy has an article on it too.
Posted by Craig McIntosh on February 1,2012 | 06:44 AM
Where is PETA!? the fashion world can use their skins for purses and donate the meat to the poor in 3rd world countries!! Easy! now get all the crazy country folks out there and start hunting! This has been a problem for years its about time they start doing something
Posted by Monica on January 31,2012 | 04:32 PM
They can train packs of dogs to smell and hunt for python eggs..and destroy the nests...the can also train that pack to kill the pythons as a group...to go after the head...in case a python attacks one of the pack. Set them off into the everglades..they will do wonders!!
Posted by Sassy Lou on January 31,2012 | 11:55 AM
hello mrs. dove, im a fan of your work. i have allways wanted to work as a herp or in the same sort of field. fact is i was born into a poor family so i had to quit school and work a dead end job. I love snakes and I housed many of wich i had to sell to get my family by. but just wanted to say good job, and keep it up. maybe someday i will get the oppertunity to work with you in the field. thanks
Posted by michael dove on January 9,2012 | 08:28 AM
1. A "determinated cuantity"? Really? Care to explain what that means?
2. "Racism"? Do you even know what the word means? Invasive, introduced species do not belong there. Pythons in Florida aren't just eating birds, they've eaten endangered species and pets. Will it take the death of a human being before you get a clue that they're a serious problem?
Posted by Jeff on April 21,2011 | 01:47 PM
I am an animal lover and protector in most cases, but this one is different. I think that the snakes should be hunted and exterminated before they become an even bigger problem. They could be used for something useful, maybe pet food, and the skins could provide belts, shoes, handbags, etc. The money from this could assure ongoing extermination to a point where the snake population is under control and stays that way. I would not want to live in an area with snakes that large anywhere close. The Florida Everglades are extensive, and left alone the snake polulation will soon take over Florida. Anyone out there want to be eaten by a hugh python?? No me!!
Posted by suzyQ on April 20,2011 | 07:01 PM
I have to address the fact that the pythons are not monsters they are simply animals that HUMANS have allowed to be let go into an environment that they do not belong in.
I agree that some measure of control needs to be taken. What that measure of control is should not be taken lightly or decided on swiftly. They are endangering the ecosystem yes, but have they already made a lasting effect on that ecosystem so that eliminating them will alter the ecosytem too much?
I applaud the research these scientists are doing. Rather than just making swift uneducated decisions, they are doing what science does best and formulating well educated theories to make a decision on.
Posted by Kim Ryder on April 20,2011 | 04:32 PM
Have a python roundup, with prizes for biggest and the most, and sell the hides to the boot/belt companies. Give bonus prizes for eggs. And have a bar-b-cue after, with carnival rides. Make some money, put a dent in the python population, and educate the folks. And have an official python hunting season to encourage people to get out there and catch some.
Posted by Mike on April 19,2011 | 05:03 PM
This is barbaric. Those snakes are just seeking a better life for themselves and their families. Who can fault them? It's racism, pure and simple.
Posted by Claude Clodd on April 19,2011 | 12:48 PM
I think that the giant snakes are part of the wildlife and we should only keep a determinated cuantity of them
Posted by soliman on April 18,2011 | 03:10 PM
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