According to Gallup, more people fear snakes than any other suggested possibility, including a fear of public speaking and heights.
Most Americans never encounter a snake that is more than a few feet long.
But it took five people to handle this one creature a Florida man caught in the Everglades.
One in 10 American adults and one in five teenagers have an extreme and overwhelming fear of snakes called ophidiophobia.
These individuals experience symptoms of anxiety or panic when they just hear a noise that sounds like a snake or even hear someone talk about snakes.
While most Americans don’t have ophidiophobia, a Gallup poll showed more than half the country does have a fear of snakes.
Of course, most folks only encounter garden snakes that grow up to three or four feet in length.
The largest snake in the world is the Burmese python.
With an average lifespan of 20 years, Burmese pythons can grow up to 23 feet in length and weigh up to 200 pounds.
And they are terrifying because unlike other snakes, the Burmese python is large enough to eat a human.
“The snake uses its sharp rearward-pointing teeth to seize prey, and then coils its body around the animal, squeezing a little tighter with each exhale until the animal suffocates,” National Geographic reported. “Stretchy ligaments in their jaws allow them to swallow animals up to five times as wide as their head!”
And the Burmese python has become a problem as an invasive species in the Florida Everglades.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission created the Python Action Team Removing Invasive Constrictors (PATRIC) that “engages qualified individuals with nonnative constrictor control efforts.”
“As of January 2023, over 18,000 pythons have been removed in the state of Florida,” the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservative Commission reported. “Of that total, over 11,000 pythons have been removed by FWC PATRIC and SFWMD PEP contractors since program inception in spring 2017.”
And one Florida man just caught one of the heaviest Burmese pythons ever recorded.
Floridian Kurt Cox caught the massive creature in the Everglades Francis S. Taylor WMA.
Stretching nearly 17 feet in length, the beast weighed a whopping 177 pounds.
“The heaviest of this species they’ve caught was a 215-pound, 17.7-foot female python in December 2021,” WFLA reported. “That snake was captured by Ian Bartoszek with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.”
“The longest snake the FWC has removed was another female, measuring 19 feet long and weighing 125.56 pounds,” WFLA added. “She was captured by citizen Jake Waleri in July 2023.”
The python captured by Cox was so big and long that it took five individuals to hold it up for a photo.
177-pound python caught in Florida is one of the heaviest officials have seen https://t.co/epCZkJLWax pic.twitter.com/O8ieHCVpoo
— KFOR (@kfor) April 22, 2024
DeSantis Daily will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.
