Florida has a long history of snake horror stories, but this one might be the most surreal yet. In Big Cypress National Preserve, biologists watched a massive Burmese python regurgitate a full-grown white-tailed deer. It wasn’t half-digested; the entire animal spilled out in one piece.
The moment came after a cold snap dropped the temperature below 50 degrees. For a cold-blooded python, this doesn’t bode well for their digestive system. Its stomach slows to a halt, while the deer inside begins to rot from the inside out. Faced with a bacterial overload, the snake did the only thing it could to survive: it puked.
Burmese Python Caught on Video Regurgitating an Entire Deer
Scientists described the scene in the journal Ecology and Evolution, calling it the first documented case of a python vomiting a deer in Florida without human interference. “Pythons are constantly doing things I never imagined, but this is such a beautiful moment where science and basic principles line up with field observations,” said Mark Sandfoss of the U.S. Geological Survey.
White-tailed deer feed the landscape as much as they feed predators. For Florida’s critically endangered panthers, they’re a lifeline. Watching one spill out of a python’s throat drove home how these snakes are reshaping the swamp. “Deer in Big Cypress have been declining for several years, and we believe pythons to be a factor in that,” said Travis Mangione of the National Park Service.
The female python under study was big enough that she only needed a few massive meals a year. Missing one could sap the energy she’d need to reproduce, which might give deer a break. If she survives, though, she could just as easily go after another. What the regurgitated deer really showed is that cold weather has the power to stall a predator that usually seems unstoppable.
When researchers returned, the snake was gliding through swamp water, leaner and seemingly unbothered, as if vomiting a deer were just another day. What it left behind was equal parts grotesque and groundbreaking, a moment that showed how even these invasive giants have weak spots, and that sometimes discovery comes wrapped in stomach-churning detail.
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