Wildlife officials in Collier County have been investigating a mysterious death in the Everglades, and they now say their findings are good news when it comes to managing invasive species.
Back in December, biologists were tracking pythons near Naples, in pursuit of a 13-foot-long, 52-pound male Burmese python named Loki. Loki was what the team called a "scout snake," fitted with a transmitter for monitoring.
Expecting to find Loki "shacked up with a big fertile female during breeding season," the team intended to "remove and euthanize" female snakes and their egg follicles to keep the invasive snake population under control.
What they found was something out of a police procedural, per WBBH.
"Very quickly we figured out he's dead, and it turned into a bit of a crime scene to some degree — CSI crime scene, wildlife," quipped biologist Ian Bartoszek.
Loki was found with his "head and neck gnawed off" and his "body partially buried," an animal behavior wildlife experts call "caching" — hiding and storing a food source for ongoing use. Bartoszek quickly put two and two together after assessing the scene.
"There's only two things that will do that, to my knowledge — a bobcat and a panther," WFLA quoted him as saying.
In conjunction with the United States Fish & Wildlife Service, the team placed trail cameras at the site, and soon enough, the culprit — a bobcat — returned to the scene of the crime.
According to Bartoszek, the whodunit amounted to a "win" in terms of conservation.
As the name suggests, invasive species — whether flora or fauna — throw ecosystems out of whack, to the detriment of native plants and animals. Non-native organisms are not invasive by default; invasive species adapt readily to a new environment, reproduce quickly, and "outcompete" their native neighbors.
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Definitely 👍 "A 25-pound cat killed and cached a 52-pound python? That's a win for the home team," Bartoszek began. "We all tend to like animals that punch above their weight class."
"Here was a native animal pushing back against an invasive apex predator," he added. "The Everglades is fighting back. That gives me hope."
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