Large snakes invading Florida are consuming the pets | EUROtoday

A month after Donald Trump and his allies pushed baseless claims that Haitian migrants in Ohio have been consuming cats and canine, biologists in Florida are warning that enormous snakes there are, in reality, consuming the pets.

The Burmese pythons have been consuming the native wildlife of southern Florida, together with white-tailed deer and alligators, in accordance with a paper printed in Reptiles & Amphibians.

Ian Bartoszek, a wildlife biologist and one of many paper’s authors, advised ABC7 that in December 2022, his crew witnessed a 15-foot feminine Burmese python consuming an grownup deer.

“For us biologists, this was the most intense thing we’ve ever seen on assignment,” he advised the outlet. “This was as primal as it gets.”

These creatures, thought-about an invasive species in southern Florida, are capable of broaden their jaws so broad that they will eat comparatively giant prey, the paper says. For instance, the smallest snake within the research ,which weighed about 115 kilos, was capable of devour a deer that weighed about 77 kilos, the paper says.

“Knowing the size of prey that predators can consume facilitates understanding and predicting their ecological impact,” the paper reads.

But, it’s not simply deer they will eat. The big snakes can eat any woodland creature or home animal that will get unfastened.

According to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Burmese pythons can eat meals equal to one hundred pc of their physique mass and are identified to eat mammals, birds and reptiles.

The latest organic revelations come shortly after the previous president, his working mate JD Vance and others accused, with out proof, Haitian migrants of consuming canine and cats in Springfield, Ohio,

Springfield Police, metropolis officers, and even the state’s Governor Mike DeWine have denounced these claims that infected anti-immigration rhetoric.

DeWine wrote in an op-ed in September: “Our people and our history deserve better than to be falsely portrayed.”

The Republican governor continued: “I am saddened by how they and others continue to repeat claims that lack evidence and disparage the legal migrants living in Springfield…This rhetoric hurts the city and its people, and it hurts those who have spent their lives there.”