In June 2021, a camera placed near a Burmese python nest in Big Cypress National Preserve recorded a bobcat eating the python’s eggs. The incident was the first documented case of a native Florida animal preying on python eggs.

The Burmese python population in the Everglades has grown since the snakes began breeding in the wild around 2000. Many were released pets or escapees. Native animals had no evolved defense against the large constrictors, and the python population expanded rapidly.

A 2012 study led by biologist Michael Dorcas, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, quantified the impact. Road surveys from the 1990s were compared with surveys taken after pythons became established. Raccoon sightings had fallen by 99.3 percent, opossums by 98.9 percent, white-tailed deer by 94.1 percent, and bobcats by 87.5 percent. Marsh rabbits and foxes no longer appeared in the surveys at all.

Pythons are difficult to detect in the swamp. Their coloring blends with leaves and mud, and they can remain submerged in shallow water. The largest female python captured in Florida weighed 215 pounds and measured nearly 18 feet.

Florida launched the Python Challenge in January 2013, a public hunt with cash prizes. About 1,600 participants searched over a million acres for a month. They caught 68 snakes. The python population was estimated at the time to be around 150,000, with some estimates now closer to 300,000.

Ian Bartoszek, a biologist with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, developed a different approach. His team captures male pythons, surgically implants radio transmitters, and releases them. The males, called “scout snakes,” naturally seek out the largest breeding females during mating season. The team follows the signals and removes both the males and the females they locate, destroying the females’ eggs before they hatch. Since 2013, the program has removed more than 1,750 pythons, totaling over 53,000 pounds.

The trail camera footage from 2021 came from a project led by USGS ecologist Andrea Curilo. Her team had tracked a nesting female python and set up cameras to observe the nest. Over several days, the bobcat fed on the eggs, buried some for later, and returned even when the female python was present. By the time biologists reached the nest, 42 eggs had been destroyed.

In May 2025, Bartoszek’s team found one of their scout snakes, a 13-foot male named Loki, dead. The evidence indicated a bobcat had killed the 52-pound snake.

Other native predators have also been documented eating young pythons. Cottonmouths, eastern indigo snakes, black racers, alligators, and American crocodiles have all been observed consuming hatchlings. USGS researchers cataloging documented python killings found that reptiles accounted for about 72 percent of them.

The documented cases of native predators killing pythons remain limited in number. The python population is still estimated in the hundreds of thousands, and the largest adults are not threatened by native wildlife. Biologists continue to remove pythons from the Everglades, and they note that human removal efforts remain necessary to limit the impact on native wildlife.

The significance of the documented predation is that it contradicts the long-held assumption that the Everglades had no natural defense against the pythons. The bobcat at the nest and the death of Loki suggest that some native animals are beginning to recognize pythons as a food source, particularly at the egg and hatchling stages.