Florida’s War On Pythons

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The Myth And Legend Of The “Florida Man”

Florida is a special kind of place.

Google’s type-ahead suggests that a lot of folks want to know why Florida is so messed up.

The “Florida Man” meme and moniker are pervasive across the Internet, especially on slow-news days.

You don’t even have to search very hard to see why.

The news stories are numerous and uniquely Floridastic (I made up that word, I think).

For a state that gets a lot of good and bad press (for good and bad reasons), one story stood out for me this year.

ICYMI: Florida has a massive python problem.

In fact, both the problem and the pythons are massive.

The South Florida Water Management District initiated a multi-pronged approach to limit snake populations.

Efforts included both the state’s annual Python Challenge, which rewards snake hunters for capturing the reptiles (you can apply to be a “Python Removal Agent”), and the use of high-tech robot rabbits (I promise, I’m not making this up) to monitor python movements throughout the Everglades.

Pythons In Florida

Pythons are not native Floridians.

Like Canadian snowbirds, they were flown in.

These were mostly exotic pets that grew too large to remain pets.

Unlike Canadian snowbirds, they can’t fly out.

Over the last 50 years, an inordinate number of Burmese Pythons have been released into Florida’s warm and watery ecosystems.

Pet breeding made the problem larger.

Hurricanes that destroyed breeding habitats exacerbated the problem, releasing countless snakes into the wild.

Researchers say it is impossible to know how many pythons are swimming in the waters of the Greater Everglades.

Estimates settle at tens to hundreds of thousands.

Female pythons can lay up to 100 eggs annually, making Florida’s big snake problem bigger every year.

And those pythons have to eat something.

In the decades since the pythons arrived, the population of medium-sized mammals in Florida has declined by more than 90%.

Since 1997, raccoons have declined by 99.3 percent, opossums by 98.9 percent, and bobcats by 87.5 percent, with marsh rabbits, cottontail rabbits, and foxes now considered locally extirpated (extinct) from most areas where pythons have made their homes.

Bunnies, It Must Be Bunnies

The only medium-sized species that survived the python population’s appetite was the black rat. But no one wanted more rats either.

Various mammals were tagged as bait animals.

Snakes ate the bait and became tagged themselves.

Rabbits were used as bait in cages to lure snakes to trapping locations.

But the poor rabbits were terrified, and the state came under criticism for the unethical treatment of the bait bunnies.

Then some clever scientists came up with a new plan.

They developed a Python Hunting Stationary Sentry Robot Rabbit.

In collaboration with the University of Florida, these robo-rabbits are built around a stuffed animal shell whose innards are removed and replaced with motors, wires, heaters, and solar panels.

These robotic bunnies emit heat and a smell that mimics those of pythons’ prey.

Cameras in the robots use advanced sensors and computer vision to capture footage of the pythons as they approach. Whenever a snake is spotted, the robots alert the researchers, and a python removal agent is dispatched to the scene to collect it.

A few of the robot bunnies made the ultimate sacrifice, being destroyed or crushed by overly ambitious snakes and alligators.

A costly death at around $4,000 USD a bunny.

But the artificial intelligence-based computer vision imaging developed for the bunnies, in addition to data collected from drones and truck-mounted sensor stations, provided substantially more data about the movement of pythons within the state.

Using data collected alongside new AI modelling, Florida has had its most successful year for python elimination to date.

It just goes to show that even the average “Florida Man” can use AI to find unexpected solutions to complicated problems.

The combined efforts (robot bunnies, AI, and snake-hunting agents) were so successful this year in Florida that they created a secondary problem: what to do with all those (humanely killed) snakes?

In October, Governor Ron DeSantis announced a new partnership with INVERSA, a company that specializes in removing invasive species while using the skins to create boots, belts, wallets, and other products.

Oh, Florida, you weird and wondrous state, never change.

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