Here’s a look back at an unusual sight.<\/p>\n
A large alligator<\/a> was caught on video dragging a colossal Burmese python<\/a> through the water in the Florida Everglades.<\/p>\n The video, shot from the observation tower at Shark Valley by Everglades National Park by tour guide Kelly Alvarez on Thanksgiving Day in 2024, shows the alligator, nicknamed “Godzilla,” holding the dead python<\/a> in its jaws and swimming along the water’s surface, dragging the snake along.<\/p>\n “It’s huge,” someone says in the video, “That’s a really, really big python.”<\/p>\n Alvarez told USA TODAY she estimates the alligator to be 10 to 12 feet long<\/a> and the python in the video appears to be close to twice the gator’s length.<\/p>\n “You know it’s something serious when it’s something we haven’t seen before,” another tour guide says in the video.<\/p>\n “I have seen many alligators eating pythons out here\u2026.I have never, ever, ever seen a python that large,” Alvarez told USA TODAY.<\/p>\n See the video below.<\/p>\n What’s the largest Burmese python caught in Florida?<\/p>\n Burmese pythons are among\u00a0the largest snakes<\/a>\u00a0in the world, with adult animals\u00a0averaging between 10 and 16 feet long<\/a>, according to the University of Florida.<\/p>\n A group of python hunters caught\u00a0the longest Burmese python ever measured<\/a>\u00a0on July 10, 2023, in the Big Cypress National Preserve in eastern Collier County.<\/p>\n The monster\u00a0snake was 19 feet long<\/a>.<\/p>\n The heaviest Burmese python ever recorded<\/a>\u00a0was caught by Conservancy of Southwest Florida biologists in the Florida Everglades\u00a0in 2022. The colossal female python weighed an eye-popping 215 pounds and was nearly 18 feet long.<\/p>\n Invasive Burmese pythons wreak havoc on Everglades ecosystem<\/p>\n Burmese pythons are an invasive species established across more than a thousand square miles of South Florida, including Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve and Collier-Seminole State Park.<\/p>\n The constrictors have few predators and prey on native species,\u00a0eating just about anything<\/a>\u00a0from field mice to deer.<\/p>\n According to a 2012 study, they’ve contributed to the decline of raccoons, opossums, bobcats, foxes, and marsh and cottontail rabbits.<\/p>\n Watch alligator pull huge Burmese python through water in Florida<\/p>\n Support local journalism\u00a0by\u00a0subscribing to a\u00a0Florida news organization.<\/a><\/p>\n