13-foot Burmese python found in downtown New York home

Authorities said Wednesday that a 13-foot-long Burmese python was recently seized from a home in central New York.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said it received a complaint Aug. 28 about illegal possession of a snake in the city of New Hartford. (A permit is required to own a Burmese python in New York.)

When Environmental Protection Officer Jeff Hull responded to the complaint, he reportedly found a Burmese python, which was allegedly still growing, in a tank measuring 4 to 5 feet long. Hull was able to identify the species of snake by the arrowhead on its head, according to a Department of Environmental Protection news release posted on Facebook.

The department said the python was found in good health, was 13 feet 2 inches long and weighed 80 pounds.

The snake “was confiscated and transferred to Fort Rickey Discovery Zoo in Rome, New York, which has the required permits to possess it,” the press release reads.

The python’s owner, who was not named in the Department of Environmental Protection news release, said he was not prepared for how quickly the animal would grow and admitted he was unable to care for it any longer.

“The snake owner was issued tickets for having wild animals as pets and for having dangerous animals without a permit,” the release reads.

Burmese pythons are non-venomous constrictors that are among the largest snakes in the world.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Invasive Species Information Center, Burmese pythons originated in Southeast Asia and were brought to the U.S. to be sold as pets. Wild populations then developed from pet pythons that escaped or were intentionally released.

Burmese pythons are said to have a particularly large population in Florida, primarily in the Everglades ecosystem. It is difficult to estimate the size of the Burmese python population in Florida because they are well camouflaged and very difficult to spot, but experts say there are likely tens of thousands of them in the state.

Burmese pythons can grow to be about 20 feet long, although most specimens are much smaller.

In South Florida, for example, the average size of those taken from the wild is about 6 to 8 feet, but lengths of up to 19 feet have been recorded. This summer, a 215-pound female python was caught in southwest Florida—the heaviest ever caught in the state.

The article uses information from the Associated Press.