Florida Bobcat Turns Predator: Devours Giant 13-Foot Python in Unprecedented Hunt
‘Score One For The Home Team’
According to reporting from the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the story of the bobcat and the snake started with a 13-foot, 52-pound python named Loki. Biologists were tracking Loki in the hope that he would lead them to female snakes, which they could then humanely euthanize. Instead, they came across Loki’s decapitated body partially buried in the Everglades.
Conservancy of Southwest FloridaLoki’s body can be seen here partially buried under some pine needles.
Loki’s head and neck had been gnawed off and his body partly covered in a “cache,” behavior indicative of a panther or a bobcat. Florida panthers are extremely rare — there are just 200 in the wild — so it seemed likely that Loki had been killed by a bobcat. Because bobcats and panthers are known to return to their caches, biologists set up a trail camera to find out for sure.
Sure enough, Loki’s killer soon wandered back to the site of the python’s body. It was a 25-pound bobcat, a creature half Loki’s weight.
Conservancy of Southwest FloridaThis bobcat was likely the animal that killed Loki.
Pythons have been known to kill bobcats — scientists have even found bobcat claws inside pythons’ bodies — but this is the first time on record that a bobcat has killed a python in Florida.
That said, scientists caution that they can’t know with absolute certainty how Loki died. He could have died before the bobcat found him, though it’s unlikely. Biologists were tracking him and knew that he was in good health. And bobcats are generally not scavenging animals. Thus, it seems most likely that a python and a bobcat met in the Everglades — and the bobcat won.
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