Can Martyred Possums Control Florida Pythons?

A student from Southern Illinois University Carbondale may have accidentally discovered a way to track the invasive Burmese pythons plaguing south Florida.

Graduate student Kelly Crandall was examining how human activities influence the movements of raccoons and possums in and around Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Key Largo. Crandall and her colleagues captured 30 possums and raccoons, fitted them with GPS collars, and set them loose.

Last September, one of the tracking collars on a possum began emitting a “mortality signal,” which meant the animal hadn’t moved for several hours and was probably dead. But after a few hours, the collar began to move again. Over the next few days, the collar emitted 30 more signals, stopping and starting again. 

“We theorized that a python might be responsible for these anomalies,” says Crandall, and she was right. The collar led the team to a 12-foot, 65-pound female python, the second-largest specimen ever captured in Key Largo. By the time they found it, the possum was completely digested but an x-ray showed the GPS tag was intact and functioning.

They euthanized the python, which was loaded with dozens of egg follicles (i.e., future pythons) and now are looking into using baited tracking collars as a means of combating the invasive snakes. “The whole incident shows that tracking prey species could be a feasible method of detecting and removing novel pythons from the ecosystem,” says Crandall.

Not great news for the possums and raccoons that might be consigned to martyrdom, but hopefully it will be really bad news for the damn pythons that have no natural enemies in the Florida wild.

Photo credit: SIU Carbondale