December 03, 2006

Contact:   Bill Giduz 704/894-2244 or bigiduz@davidson.edu

Watch a video about a recently performed surgery on campus, produced by Adam Martin '06 and Mark Jeevaratnam '10.

The striking photo broadcast worldwide last year from the Everglades National Park of a dead thirteen-foot python with a dead six-foot alligator halfway down its gullet raised awareness of the fact that there might be a new king of the swamp!

“Over the last couple of years, the frequency of python sightings in Everglades National Park has increased due to a rapidly expanding population,” explained Mike Dorcas, associate professor of biology at Davidson College. “Because they are such big animals, there are concerns about their effects on humans and the Everglades ecology.”

Burmese pythons, which are native to Southeast Asia, are popular pets in southern Florida. However, they can grow to more than twenty feet in length, and over the years, many owners cast them into the Everglades when they became too large for care. The snakes have thrived and reproduced in that warm, wet environment, and biologists fear they may be a threat to endangered species of native birds and mammals, and reptiles.

Dorcas and one of his students, Kristen Cecala ’06, have become involved in efforts by the National Parks Service to control and ultimately remove pythons from the Everglades by implanting them with radio transmitters so their movements can be tracked.

Dorcas was invited to assist because of his previous experience placing small radio transmitters in animals. He has conducted studies using the technology to better understand the habitat selection of various snakes in South Carolina, Idaho, and Davidson.

Dorcas and Cecala have traveled to the Everglades to conduct surgery on snakes there, and two captured snakes have been flown to Davidson for surgery here.

Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,700 students. Since its founding by Presbyterians in 1837, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently ranked in the top ten liberal arts colleges in the country by U.S. News and World Report magazine.

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