Bobcat vs. python: Rare video captures Florida bobcat raiding Everglades snake nest for eggs
The conflict set up like a UFC title fight. But instead of the Octagon, this melee took place deep in a Florida swamp away from screaming fans and boisterous commentators.
In one corner was a female Burmese python nearly 14 feet long, an imposing specimen of the invasive population of predatory snakes inhabiting South Florida's wild lands for over three decades now. Her opponent was a male bobcat representing one of dozens of native species whose population dynamics have been forever altered by the arrival of the insatiable eating machines.
Researchers studying the snakes' effect on the 1-million-plus acres of wilderness in the Greater Everglades Ecosystem have been puzzled by one question: Can native wildlife win key battles against these slithering evasive monsters?
A team led by U.S. Geological Survey researcher Andrea Currylow observed something never before seen that answers that question for the first time. In short, her team's findings give Everglades wildlife and all who care about it hope.
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On June 1, 2021, Currylow and her team deployed a movement-triggered still-photograph game camera at the site of a Burmese python nest in Big Cypress National Preserve. The snake was located by using radio telemetry.
The snake was already part of another USGS python tracking program in which they surgically insert a tiny radio transmitter into some caught snakes' bodies before releasing them back into the wild. This gives researchers a better chance of locating them again, to learn more about their behaviors in the wild or to remove other pythons.
When team members returned to the nesting site three days later, they saw on the camera's memory card that a male bobcat had visited later the same day the camera was deployed. But what shocked the scientists was what the bobcat did.
He helped himself to a fresh python egg dinner.
"What we saw was very exciting," said Currylow, who is part of the USGS Fort Collins Science Center's field research station. USGS researchers collaborate with federal and state agencies, universities and nonprofits to target research on invasive animals to improve management. Currylow's research aims to understand python survival, reproduction and dispersal.
This was the first time researchers had mounted a game camera near a python's nest, Currylow said.
"Usually, we remove the nest because we don’t want them to hatch. We actually weren’t sure if we were going to be able to capture (the female python) moving because we think pythons move too slowly to trigger the camera to take a photo," she explained.
When the team returned to the site and found the nest destroyed, they first thought that maybe the mother snake's body weight crushed the eggs. They were completely surprised to see the bobcat in the photographs.
"The camera didn't catch the snake, but it did catch the bobcat," she said.
The first day the bobcat arrived, there were at least eight photographs snapped by the camera showing it consuming the snake eggs and trampling the nest. The next day, 13 images show the bobcat returning, consuming more eggs, then caching, or covering, the eggs with pine needles and dirt.
At about 5:30 p.m. on June 2, 2021, the bobcat returns, but the python can be seen back on her nest. Not much is understood about pythons' nesting behavior, except that mother snakes appear to remain close to the nest to offer "shivering thermogenesis" — meaning keeping the eggs warm — for an unknown length of time, Currylow explained.
The incubation time is thought to be about 60-90 days, but the mother python leaves the nest early for unknown reasons, she said.
Images captured June 3 show the bobcat and the nesting python in a standoff. Early on the morning of June 4, the camera captured images of the snake lunging at the bobcat and the bobcat taking a swipe with a paw.
When the biologists arrived at 10:30 a.m., that is when they realized these revealing, fascinating and first of their kind discoveries: proof of an animal preying on an invasive Burmese python nest, and antagonistic behavior between a bobcat and a python.
The findings were published in November 2021 in the scientific journal Ecology and Evolution.
"Though it has long been hypothesized, no one has reported natural nest defense behaviors by Burmese pythons in the wild. We are the first to present photographic documentation of any reciprocal antagonistic interactions between these two top predators," Currylow wrote in an email to TCPalm.
The discovery came at about the same time as two other recent discoveries by National Park Service and Conservancy of Southwest Florida researchers working together with Currylow in the same ecosystem:
Two cottonmouth moccasin snakes were found to have eaten small radio-tagged pythons, a dead adult python was determined to have been killed by a bobcat, and an injured python was determined to have been scarred by a black bear.
Researchers also theorize that python nests may be depredated by skunks, raccoons, coyotes, possums, insects and panthers, but no evidence has been found to support it. The discoveries are encouraging to wildlife managers hoping to loosen the grip the constricting pythons have had on Florida's ecosystem.
"In this current study, we provide the first direct photographic evidence that some Everglades native mammals may be becoming resilient to the python invasion. They may be beginning to recognize invasive pythons and eggs as potential food items. With the magnitude of the python problem in South Florida, it is important to understand if some natives may be resilient," Currylow wrote in an email.
It's good to know animals that have been identified as food sources for pythons — bobcats among them — might actually be fighting back.
"We’re hoping to find more evidence," she said. "We don’t have enough to say the resilience is there yet, but we hope to build on that."
Currylow and others are optimistic this interaction wasn't just a one-off and that bobcats are learning that python nests are a food source.