As I often remind our esteemed readers when I post goofy videos, it’s nice to take a break from politics every once in a while. Or often.
Which brings us to today’s political distraction from the New York Post:
Python with tracking device reveals snake sex parties https://t.co/ARDVdQWw9W pic.twitter.com/i0kAIG3sv3
— New York Post (@nypost) April 20, 2018
You win, clickbait.
A slithering sentinel male python equipped with a surgically implanted tracking device led Florida wildlife biologists to what they are calling a “breeding aggregation” — or snake sex party.
“Breeding aggregations” were called “key parties” in the 1970s, by the way.
The article says that the scientists “nicknamed” the snake Argo, which would imply that the snake has a given name. Is this some sort of weird Harry Potter parseltongue thing that exists in real life but the general, non-scientific public doesn’t know about?
The saga continues:
On Valentine’s Day, Argo led them to what is being called the largest breeding aggregation ever discovered in Collier County, near Naples in Southwest Florida.
“We locate him and then there is another male and another male and another,” Bartoszek, who is with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, told the Naples News. “We know what all the males are for, so it’s like, where’s the female?”
The massive 15-foot-long, 115-pound egg-laying female was found nearby. There were a total of six male snakes – not including Argo.
“It was intense, it was a lot of snake in one spot,” Bartoszek told the Sun Sentinel.
Great, a bunch of snakes have a better Valentine’s Day story than I could ever hope for. My dad was a florist and Valentine’s Day just gives me flashbacks of delivering flowers for sixteen hours and listening to a bunch of idiot guys who didn’t bother to order the bouquets until noon that day complain about how late they arrived.
On the rare occasions when I am in a relationship, I fake having both strep throat and norovirus every February 14th.
Sadly, there is no happy ending here, as this is all being done for purposes of population control:
The seven snakes found were euthanized. Argo was re-released for additional tracking.
The female had 60 eggs inside her and most of them would have hatched, Bartoszek affirmed. However, it’s unclear how many of those hatchlings would have survived.
The Conservancy of Southwest Florida have been using other male pythons like Argo to help track females, which biologists said are far more significant when it comes to population control because of the sheer number of eggs they can lay.
The scientist say that this tracking isn’t just about population control, but research too.
T.G.I.F.
Now we have the weekend to ponder the fact that a “snake sex party” story may be one of the least weird to come out of Florida in a while.
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