A Letter to Florida: Please Stop Releasing Snakes Into The Everglades

Dear Florida,
Between 1996 and 2006 an estimated 99,000 Burmese pythons were imported into the US, of these an estimated 30,000 now live in the Everglades. Worse yet, they, along with released Boas, are now breeding.

Snake’s Legs and Ninety Two Million Year Old Fossils

The BBC has an interesting story about the use intense x-rays at the ESRF in France to image the hidden second leg of a fossil Eupodophis descouensi:

I’m Beginning To Think That Pythons Are Not Terribly Bright

As a matter of fact I’m beginning to think that they are downright stupid. First, there was the python that ate the alligator, then one ate an electric blanket, a third tried eating a pregnant sheep. Now this…

Friday Python Blogging

Pythons are rather cool, in that the hallmarks of their evolution (limb loss) can be seen. In that respect they are (like whales) good examples of the evolutionary process.

During the course of their evolutionary history, which spans some 30-60 million years, snakes lost their limbs and pelvis. Except some species in the Boidae family (of which, pythons are a subfamily) still retain vestigial pelvis and limbs.

Like other animals pythons are not immune from covergent evolution!

Finally, some intersting links:

Vestigial Limbs ,

General info, Vestigial limbs, Vestigial limbs,

Phylogeny and evolution,

Mechanisms of limb loss,

Phylogeny,

Bibliography (asian boiids),

Molecular phlogeny,

General,

Evolutionary issues,

EMBL Reptile Database,

More molecular phylogeny,

Cold Blooded News,

and finally Some paleontology