Tag Archives: pet trade

Pythons are true choke artists; Take on prey as large as a deer

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Burmese pythons are not just big snakes, growing to more than 18 feet and 200 pounds, but big eaters, taking on prey as large as a deer.

Biologists at the University of Cincinnati found that it’s not just the size of its head and body that puts almost everything on a python’s menu. They evolved super-stretchy skin between their lower jaws that allows them to consume prey up to six times larger than similar-sized snakes.

Since most snakes swallow prey whole, they must have wide mouths to accommodate a meal. Unlike our lower jawbone, the lower jawbones of snakes are not connected, allowing them to open wide.

“The stretchy skin between left and right lower jaws is radically different in pythons. Just over 40% of their total gape area on average is from stretchy skin,” lead author and UC biology professor Bruce Jayne said. “Even after you correct for their large heads, their gape is enormous.”

BurmesePython

Ecologists with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida capture a 215-pound Burmese python in Everglades National Park./Photo:Ian Bartoszek/Conservancy of Southwest Florida

Pythons are constrictors. They bite their prey and wrap their powerful coils around it, fatally cutting off the animal’s vital blood flow, before consuming it whole at their leisure.

The bigger the prey, the more energy a snake derives from a meal. For pythons, that means not having to hunt as often, which can carry extensive risk in a world full of busy roads and dangerous predators.

Along with pythons, Jayne studied the gape size of brown tree snakes, a mildly venomous arboreal specialist that hunts birds and other animals in the forest canopy. Brown tree snakes were introduced in the 1950s to Guam, wiping out many bird species.

Besides measuring the snakes, Jayne also measured the dimensions and weight of potential prey animals. This allowed Jayne to use snake size to predict the maximal size of its prey and the relative benefits of consuming different types such as alligators, chickens, rats or deer.

Small snakes derive greater benefits in relative prey mass from a modest increase in gape size, the study found. This gives python babies an early advantage in taking on a broader range of prey compared to other snakes their size, Jayne said.

Being big also helps snakes avoid becoming meals themselves. Snakes fall prey to everything from wading birds to minks and raccoons to alligators and other snakes.

“Once those pythons get to a reasonable size, it’s pretty much just alligators that can eat them,” Jayne said. “And pythons eat alligators.”

Like invasive brown tree snakes in Guam, Burmese pythons are wreaking havoc on the ecology of Everglades National Park where they were introduced due to the release of captive animals from the exotic pet trade in the 1980s.

Study co-author Ian Bartoszek works as an environmental science project manager for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, where he has led a project to track pythons. They implant radio transmitters in male snakes during breeding season to find females before they can lay more clutches of eggs. A big female python can lay more than 100 eggs.

Researchers routinely find deer hooves and the remains of other big animals in their stomachs. Bartoszek photographed one python regurgitating a full-grown white-tailed deer.

“The Everglades ecosystem is changing in real time based on one species, the Burmese python,” Bartoszek said.

The good news is that pythons rarely attack people. Bartoszek said the only defensive encounters he’s had with wild pythons are with females guarding their nests.

“It’s way more dangerous to drive there than to work with the snakes,” he said.

How songbirds’ striking, unique colors put them at risk [Details]

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Bright, uniquely colored songbirds are at higher risk of extinction and more likely to be traded as pets, according to researchers reporting in Current Biology on September 15. The researchers also predict that almost 500 additional bird species, most of them living in the tropics, are at risk of future trade based on their unique and desirable coloration.

“Aesthetic value is an important part of how people value nature,” said Rebecca Senior (@RebeccaASenior) of Durham University, U.K. “However, there is potential for conflict when what motivates some people to protect certain species is the same thing that makes other people want to own them. Songbirds are highly sought after in the pet trade, particularly for their beautiful songs. However, songbirds can also be remarkably colorful—a highly desirable trait in other commonly traded species, such as parrots.”

In their new study, Senior and colleagues including Brett Scheffers (@BrettScheffers) of University of Florida, Gainesville explored the antagonistic roles of aesthetic value in biodiversity conservation. They used novel metrics of color to evaluate the aesthetics of groups of birds, across the world and the avian tree of life.

Common hill myna (Gracula-religiosa); Least Concern; color uniqueness score of 66.9/Rick Stanley and Gabby Salazar

Their analysis shows that the tropics are the epicenter of bird color, with 91% and 65% of the world’s most diverse and uniquely colored assemblages of songbirds, respectively. They report that the pet trade, which affects 30% of all bird species, targets clusters of related and uniquely colored birds. They went on to identify 478 species of birds that may be at risk of future trade based on their appealing colors.

“We were surprised to see the strength of the latitudinal gradient in color; even when you account for the greater number of species in the tropics, the diversity of color in the tropics dwarfs all other regions,” Senior said.

While one might expect brilliant blues, oranges, and yellows to put species at risk, the researchers were also surprised to discover that pure white is a unique color found in many sought-after species, such as the endangered Bali myna. The findings overall highlight that the same color features that make some people willing to travel around the world for a mere glimpse of a bird through binoculars also potentially puts them at risk for pet trading. The findings have important implications for conservation.

Kuno national park

“Understanding what motivates trade is essential to identify at-risk species potentially requiring more proactive protection from trapping,” Senior said. “Trade has the capacity to be regulated and managed sustainably with a better understanding of what is traded as well as where and why trade occurs. Loss of colorful species also directly erodes aesthetic value, which is problematic because, for better or worse, it is this value that often fundamentally motivates and funds conservation efforts.”

In future studies, they hope to disentangle even more factors that play into regional variation in patterns of trade among birds. They’d also like to explore the role of color in the trade of other groups of animals and plants.