September 7, 2008

A 15-foot long Burmese Python attacked a 13-year old girl in her Las Vegas bedroom last week. (Pet Pulse Photo Illustration by Mike Lloyd)

NEW YORK -- A Las Vegas father was forced to kill his family’s 15-foot long pet Burmese Python after the snake attacked his 13-year-old daughter.

According to local media reports, the father, who preferred to keep his family’s identity concealed, cut the pet snake’s head off after it bit his daughter’s leg and coiled around the girl and her uncle, who was also trying to help free the girl.

The Burmese Python -- Victoria, a family pet for four years -- was normally contained in a locked tank, the father said, but somehow managed to escape and found the daughter in her room.

After biting the teenager, the snake began to coil around the girl’s torso until it became difficult to breathe.

The father said he used a knife to remove the snake’s head after efforts to pry Victoria’s jaw open with his hands failed.

That behavior, according to Jim Murphy, who retired as director of the Department of Herpetology at the Dallas Zoo after 30 years, sounds like a “feeding response.”

“Anything could have been a reason," Murphy said about the cause of the attack. “The snake could have viewed her as potential prey.”

Murphy said that a normal response for a Burmese Python that feels threatened is to strike, often several times, and then retreat.

A snake that bites and constricts is looking to feed, he said.

Murphy said, without having all the details of the incident in Las Vegas, said the girl could have been handling a different animal and the snake picked up on that scent through chemical receptors on its tongue.

“Every now and then, you see a story in the newspaper about someone handling potential prey for a snake and then being attacked,” Murphy said.

Certainly not all Burmese Pythons are aggressive, though, Murphy said. In fact, in his years at the Dallas Zoo, one Burmese in particular was as docile as it gets.

“We had one that we used (for demonstrations) easily hundreds of times. People would handle it and touch it and we never had a single problem.”

That Burmese, though, was raised from a hatchling by a former employee and one of the most prominent snake breeders in the country, David Barker of Vida Preciosa Internation near San Antonio, Texas.

Burmese Pythons, according to National Geographic, can live as long as 20 to 25 years in the wild and are typically from 16 to 23 feet long, weighing up to 200 pounds.

While Murphy himself doesn’t have any snakes as pets, he sees no problem with others keeping them.

“It totally depends on the person,” he said. “If they are responsible and don’t let them get out, I don’t have a problem with it.”

But the Las Vegas family, who went public as a way to warn other snake owners, said Burmese Python owners need to pay attention to their pets and should reconsider having one at all if children are in the house.

United States Geological Survey Research Zoologist Roy McDiarmid agreed.

“Any time you operate with, keep or are around a large predator, which a 15-foot snake is, it’s potentially more of a risk,” McDiarmid said.

McDiarmid, who doesn’t own any snakes himself, said he has heard of people with large, predatory pets that have run into trouble. People who keep pets like that, McDiarmid said, “I won’t say they’re crazy, but they’re close to it.”

Both experts said that with pets like a Burmese Python, some owners are unable to handle them as they grow quite large, and either give them up or set them loose.

In the Florida Everglades, officials are still dealing with an a Burmese Python population that has exploded in recent years after some pet owners allegedly let their snakes loose in the wild.

After the U.S. Geological Survey released a study earlier this year suggesting that the Florida Burmese Python population could spread across the nation to as many as 32 states, a newer study was released in August that contradicted that analysis.

The second study, performed by a pair of graduate students and a professor in New York City, found that the snakes will likely remain in Florida.

A U.S. Senator from Florida, Democrat Bill Nelson, said he plans on submitting federal legislation in September that would ban interstate sale of Burmese Pythons and importing the snakes into the country.

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