How the introduction of a large predator can dramatically change an ecosystem

Burmese pythons are now established in several parts of Florida, including Everglades National Park.

These large constrictors have been kept as pets for decades in the United States. In most parts of the country, they simply cannot survive the winter.

I remember hearing the story of a local guy who was working for a company that was putting a water line in a rural part of West Virginia. As he was helping lay out where the line was supposed to go, he came across a skeleton. A big skeleton!

It turned to be that of a huge snake– maybe 8 or 9 feet long.

After doing some research on the internet, he realized he had come across the remains of a Burmese python that someone had either released into the wild or escaped to make its own fortune in the wild.  Too bad it was running loose in a place with a humid continental climate, and it didn’t last very long.

Florida, unlike West  Virginia, has the perfect climate for this species. It is native to Southeast Asia and Southern China, which are places that have a climate that is somewhat similar to that of much of Florida.

So if a Burmese python gets loose around here, it won’t last long, but if it gets loose in Florida, it might as well have been released into its native habitat.

And that’s why Burmese pythons have thrived in parts of Florida.

The problem is that Florida isn’t their native habitat.

And their residency in a national park certainly hasn’t gone unnoticed.

It was assumed that these snakes were causing real problems with the ecosystem, but no one had been able to quantify how much they have affected other species.

Well, a study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America last winter that actually quantified the effects of Burmese python predation.

The authors simply made a comparison between roadkill surveys from the period before and after the year 2000. From 2003-2011, there was a massive drop-off of certain species.

There was a 99.3% decrease in raccoon observations.  A 98.9 percent decrease in opossum observations was detected over those years, and an 87.5% decrease in observations of bobcats. No rabbits were detected at all during these years.

Now, it might be a bit of a stretch to blame the pythons for the decrease in every species.

But all of these animals are potential python prey, and if pythons are on the increase, they would be major predators of these animals.

Raccoons and bobcats have only alligators to worry about under normal circumstances. Alligators are restricted in where they live. It is almost unheard of for an alligator to run something down on land and kill it.

However, pythons can hunt over a much broader area, and they are more of a problem for these animals than alligators would normally be.

Now, raccoons, bobcats (at least the small Florida subspecies), and opossums are mesopredators. They generally tend to prey upon smaller species, like songbirds.

It is possible that Burmese pythons might be having a positive impact on songbirds.  An adult Burmese python isn’t going to waste time hunting birds– but the younger ones might.

So there may not be a benefit from Burmese pythons controlling mesopredator release.

Plus, there are other introduced species in the park besides Burmese pythons. Some, like black rats and feral cats, are much more of a problem for songbirds than these mesopredators.

But the Burmese python would also kill them.

So it gets a bit complicated.

But these study does show that Burmese pythons could be implicated in massive population drops in certain native species.

And we should be concerned.

 

 

 

The Afghan hounds that weren’t

This image comes from a piece in the Afghan Hound Times.

All the historical information comes from Jess Ruffner, who has the DesertWindHounds blog.

Apparently some Afghan hound sources counted two dogs, Khelat and Kushki, as Afghan hounds.

They were nothing of the sort.

They were both dogs that we’d recognize as Central Asian ovtcharkas. No description of Kushki is given– other than the dog was creamy white.

But Khelat appears to be an ovtcharka with a twist– a shaggy, poodle-type coat.

These dogs were imported to England in the 1880′s, but a more Ovtcharka-looking dog named “Shere Ali” was exhibited at Crufts in 1879– right in the middle of the Second Afghan War.

Depictions of golden retrievers from 1930′s cigarette cards

Both of these images come from paintings by Arthur Wardle that were turned into “cigarette card. Cigarette cards were used to stiffen the package, and the cards themselves were collectibles.

1931 cigarette card from John Player & Sons in Nottingham, England.  

1937 cigarette card from the W.D. & H.O. Wills company in Bristol, England.

Both of these dogs are fairly moderate in bone and feathering, and they are also relatively dark in color– which is exactly what we have come to expect from golden retrievers from the 1930′s.

It’s a free society

If dogs could talk…

This would be their main complaint:

Kent Hovind does dinosaurs

This is the best part of his most moonbattish lectures, “Dinosaurs and the Bible” :

Source.

This is where he starts talking about dragons!

And once again, he thinks that grizzly bears lived in the Eastern US.

 

 

California’s lone wolf seeks the company of coyotes

Supposedly, wolves and coyotes always hate each other.

And even though they can crossbreed and produce fertile offspring, we know that they never have in the wild.

So goes the reasoning behind the denialism that certain wolves in the Eastern Canada are wolves with some coyote ancestry.

But California’s sole wolf, which wandered down from Oregon last winter, seems to have not read all books.

He was recently spotted playing with some coyotes!

It’s very likely that relic wolf population in the East and Midwestern US– and yes, the South– were very willing to interbreed with coyotes as they gradually worked their way across the continent. There may have always been some small populations of coyote in the East, and these coyotes hooked up with the relict populations of wolf.

Wolves and coyotes likely only cross when wolf populations are heavily pressed. The two animals have very different body language, and normally, wolves kill whatever coyotes they encounter.

But this wolf is showing us what it may have been like for those remaining few wolves in the East as they encountered a swelling tide of coyotes.

See related posts:

• The creature formerly known as the “red wolf”
• No unique Eastern wolf species
• The dubious red wolf
• The junk science behind the red wolf
• America’s “park coyote”