Here’s a good thought experiment: what animal do you think you could best in a fight? A housecat? A sheep? Even a horse?
In this hypothetical battle, you’d have to know your own prowess—and the strength of the creatures you’d encounter. For that reason, you probably can’t imagine beating an alligator. But if you can’t fight this fierce reptile, don’t think you could take on a Burmese python, either. It turns out that when these apex predators duke it out, pythons aren’t afraid to devour their scaly opponents whole.
It’s true, though rare: in Florida, where Burmese pythons are an invasive species, they’ve been known to eat alligators. In 2022, for instance, scientists dissected an 18-foot Burmese python that had clearly just finished its last dinner. Its meal turned out to be a 5-foot-long gator, barely digested. Talk about eat or be eaten.
Once a popular pet, Burmese pythons now threaten to overrun the Everglades, where they’ve devastated native wildlife populations. Their size means they face few challenges—the longest ever found reached an incredible 19 feet. Pythons use their long, ropey body to coil around prey, constricting until escape is impossible. They then open their jaw not by dislocation but thanks to stretchy ligaments, and—gulp!—begin the slow process of swallowing their meal.
One study suggests that there might be Burmese pythons who can open their mouths wide—really wide. Maybe so wide they could swallow 200-pound gators; that’s even larger than the 5-footer devoured in 2022.
The takeaway: don’t try to fight a Burmese python in hand-to-snake combat.
A special thanks goes to Amy A. Yackel and Mark R. Sandfoss, the U.S. Geological Survey, for reviewing today's episode.
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SourcesGruesome video reveals the moment a 5-foot alligator corpse was cut from the gut of a dead python, Live Science
Florida’s invasive snakes can eat bigger prey than we knew, Conservancy of Southwest Florida
Pythons are true choke artists, Science Daily
Pythons can eat bigger prey than we knew, University of Cincinnati News
Jayne, Bruce C., Ian C. Easterling, and Ian A. Bartoszek. “Big pythons, big gape, and big prey.” Reptiles & Amphibians, vol. 31, no. 1, 2024. https://doi.org/10.17161/randa.v31i1.21867.
