Piranha caught in South FLA .. This wont help the cause...

[skjl47]

Media feeding you some false information again.....There isn't a single of case where a bullseye snakehead attacked a Floridian after 20 years of living in Florida. You have better chances of being attack by an alligator than pythons, snakeheads or piranhas.

hello; Perhaps the point is that these species can inflict harm and as non-native species should not be in the environment. They should have been banned a long time ago. In an earlier post you commented that piranhas would only attack under special circumstances. I imagine that when those special circumstances do occur, that the victim might not be too relieved to know that it was special circumstances.
I seem to recall seeing people being bitten by the pythons in some of the documentary films. I know they were catching the snakes and thus more likely to be bitten.
Leaving the potential for harm to humans directly aside, there is a much bigger and documented impact that these non native species have on ecosystems.

 

[MN_Rebel]

hello; Perhaps the point is that these species can inflict harm and as non-native species should not be in the environment. They should have been banned a long time ago. In an earlier post you commented that piranhas would only attack under special circumstances. I imagine that when those special circumstances do occur, that the victim might not be too relieved to know that it was special circumstances.
I seem to recall seeing people being bitten by the pythons in some of the documentary films. I know they were catching the snakes and thus more likely to be bitten.
Leaving the potential for harm to humans directly aside, there is a much bigger and documented impact that these non native species have on ecosystems.

"Hello"

Once again, it is nearly impossible for recreate the special conditions in Florida to get attacked by piranhas. it is high unlikely for piranhas able to breeding in Florida, since their cousin the pacus do not breeding in Florida waters. Plus the piranha's natural predator is in Florida as well aka peacock bass. Yes people get bitten by the pythons but no one was killed by these pythons, yet there are some cases where alligators and dogs have attacked and killed the humans in recent years. Not mentioned that pythons in Florida are mainly smaller pythons and very few big pythons but that is uncommon. My point is that everyone need get some education instead of banning whole genus of "dangerous" animals. Look at the northern snakehead which is ONLY ONE species that is cold tolerant and they banned WHOLE genus of snakeheads which cannot survive anywhere in United States beside the Southern Florida and Hawaii.

May you provide the REAL evidence that pythons and snakeheads have negative impacts on the ecosystems beside the false information that media feeds it to you? To my knowledge there's no documented impacts on papers.

Here is my advice: research well on each species since I am thinking that media has been feeding their poorly-researched information to your mind. BTW please do not watch any "wildlife" documentary films as some of them often have false information, like our recently documentary films on snakeheads and pythons.

 

[skjl47]

Hello; Not that it makes any of my statements more correct, I do base a large portion of what I write from a bit of education. I have a degree in biology and took a few graduate courses dealing with ecology and environmental issues. I also taught courses which included environmental units for much of 33 years. My background neither makes my statements more or less correct, but I do not get information from only media which you seem to discredit. I also wrote a thesis on the impact of an invasive plant species which also does not make anything I post more or less correct.
Any exotic (non-native) species will have an impact when it becomes established in a new environment. The impact can be somewhat mild but often is a problem for the native populations. Competition for food, displacing natives from habitats by outcompeting for vital resources and predation are common. Invasive species are a big problem in many places around the world.

 

[MN_Rebel]

Hello; Not that it makes any of my statements more correct, I do base a large portion of what I write from a bit of education. I have a degree in biology and took a few graduate courses dealing with ecology and environmental issues. I also taught courses which included environmental units for much of 33 years. My background neither makes my statements more or less correct, but I do not get information from only media which you seem to discredit. I also wrote a thesis on the impact of an invasive plant species which also does not make anything I post more or less correct.
Any exotic (non-native) species will have an impact when it becomes established in a new environment. The impact can be somewhat mild but often is a problem for the native populations. Competition for food, displacing natives from habitats by outcompeting for vital resources and predation are common. Invasive species are a big problem in many places around the world.

I also took the same natural resources classes as you do, however I see no evidence that these specific predators have negative impacts on these ecosystems. Snakeheads and pythons was able to co-existed with the natives without any side-effects on the ecosystems. Like I said, research on these species whose to be believed to have negative impacts on the ecosystems then come to me. Yes the invasives were huge problem in most areas but pythons, piranhas and snakeheads were not one of these invasives.

 

[nightzshadow]

There was a documentary a while back on television about the damages pythons are causing in the Florida everglades, one instance of this is there is a rare woodland mouse about 200-300 left in the wild, they found two of these in the belly of an invasive python. This is evidence of an invasive species hurting the native population.

 

[MN_Rebel]

There was a documentary a while back on television about the damages pythons are causing in the Florida everglades, one instance of this is there is a rare woodland mouse about 200-300 left in the wild, they found two of these in the belly of an invasive python. This is evidence of an invasive species hurting the native population.

Yes and they have found rare woodland mouse in a native snake too. However these are cold-blooded, means they don't eat very much. Just because they found two rare mouse in a python doesn't mean the pythons are going to wiping out whole woodland mouse populations. It appeared that these rare rodents are not the python's main food items anyways.

 

[rgonzales]

Not to mention they dont take into account what feral cats do to native animal populations and there are many more of them that can survive in places the pythons couldnt, so what really deserved to be banned?

 

[MN_Rebel]

Not to mention they dont take into account what feral cats do to native animal populations and there are many more of them that can survive in places the pythons couldnt, so what really deserved to be banned?

These feral cats probably eating more woodland mice than these pythons.

 

[skjl47]

Yes and they have found rare woodland mouse in a native snake too. However these are cold-blooded, means they don't eat very much. Just because they found two rare mouse in a python doesn't mean the pythons are going to wiping out whole woodland mouse populations. It appeared that these rare rodents are not the python's main food items anyways.

Hello; While you may chose to dismiss or belittle the impact of a non-native species, in this case a python, the fact remains that finding an endangered species in the stomach contents is concrete evidence of predation.
The fact that feral cats, other predators or habitat destruction may also be impacting the native endangered species does not change the additional impact of a non-native/exotic predator such as the pythons that should not be in the environment in the first place.
With a much reduced population of the endangered native rodent taken into consideration, it becomes even more significant that even small numbers are victims of predation by an exotic predator. While it is not conclusive that finding two in the stomach of pythons indicates that the pythons may have some particular ability to catch them, it does raise the question. One of the problems an exotic species, in this case a predator, presents is that the native species it is able to prey on will often not have a natural defense developed on a long period of time.

 

[rgonzales]

Its funny how people dismiss the cats as the problem and focus on the pythons.