- Will stuffed rabbits finally solve Florida’s ongoing issue with huge snakes?
Florida has a problem. Alright, several, but we’re talking a particularly big one.
A 16-foot-long problem that weighs about 165 pounds and looks like a giant snake.
Invasive Burmese pythons have been rampaging through Florida’s wild parts over the last few decades. The Sunshine State is apparently a python paradise, and the snakes are multiplying almost exponentially.
However, they don’t belong in Florida and native animals have no clue of how to deal with the humongous snakes. As such, the pythons are devastating Floridian wildlife.
Obviously, this situation cannot stand, and Floridian nature conservancy organizations are hard at work to get rid of the pythons. However, removing thousands upon thousands of giant snakes is easier said than done, and the work often requires creative solutions.
Take, for instance, Florida’s latest anti-python innovation — robot rabbits.
These robotized toy rabbits look, sound, and even smell like the real things. A human can obviously tell it’s just a stuffed animal, but a snake can’t, and the hungry python will be easy to capture as it approaches the rabbit.
Or that’s the plan, at least. We’ll just have to wait and see whether this latest attempt will be enough to free Florida from the slithering menace.
Turning Their Hunger Against Them
If there’s anything a Burmese python loves in its reptile heart, it’s a juicy, plump rabbit. This fact gave ecologists at the University of Florida an idea.
Would it be possible to weaponize the python’s endless hunger for rabbits and use it against them?
As it turns out, it is. Teaming up with the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), University of Florida created the latest ultimate anti-python weapon — a stuffed toy rabbit.
Well, a high-tech stuffed toy rabbit. Instead of fluffy polyester, these bunnies are filled with a robotic skeleton, small heaters, and what’s essentially an aromatherapy dispenser.
Thanks to the mechanical skeleton, the robot rabbits are able to shuffle around like real rabbits. The internal heater keeps them at the average bunny body temperature, and the aroma emitter makes them smell like a rabbit.
“They look like a real rabbit,” Mike Kirkland, lead invasive animal biologist at SFWMD, summarized to the Associated Press. “They are solar powered and can be switched on and off remotely.”
All in all, a Burmese python can’t tell the difference between a real rabbit and the robot.
‘Hard Time Finding Them’
But how do the toy bunnies work? Does the snake swallow it and then it blows up?
Of course not; that’d be animal cruelty. Instead, their whole point is to draw the pythons out into the open.
According to Kirkland, removing a Burmese python is easy. The hard part of the job is trying is locating them. You wouldn’t think finding a more than 10-foot-long snake would be difficult, but it can be almost impossible.
“We’re having a really hard time finding them. They’re so well camouflaged in the field,” Kirkland said.
The robot rabbits take care of finding the pythons. They can’t resist a tasty bunny and will give up their location on their own.
“[The rabbits] are placed in small pens monitored by a video camera that sends out a signal when a python is nearby,” explained Kirkland.
“Then I can deploy one of our many contractors to go out and remove the python,” he added
Environmental Catastrophe
The robot rabbit plan sounds a bit too good and simple to be true, but we can only hope it works. After all, the Burmese pythons have left Florida’s wildlife in dire straits.
The number of pythons in Florida has exploded over the last 30–40 years. It’s difficult to say how many Burmese pythons live in Florida, but estimates range from around 20,000 to 300,000.
It’s not perfectly clear how the Southeast Asian snakes got to Florida. Many of them are believed to be descendants of pet and captive snakes that escaped into the wild. The largest single contributor event is believed to be an exotic reptile warehouse, which was destroyed in the 1992 Hurricane Andrew, releasing hundreds of pythons into the Everglades.
But however they got there, the snakes are enjoying Florida. So much so that just in the Everglades, they’ve wiped out 95% of all small mammals. In addition to rabbits, the pythons have gobbled up local raccoons, possums, foxes, and bobcats.
The robot rabbits aren’t the first unusual solution to the python problem. They were preceded by an earlier scheme using actual real rabbits, but that plan was abandoned due to the high cost of keeping the rabbits.
Other animals have contributed to the fight against the pythons as well. For instance, in 2020, Florida enlisted dogs in the Rocky Glades area.
The dogs weren’t bait, by the way. They just sniffed out the snakes.