By Julia Jacobo
Python farming could offer one of the most sustainable sources of meat in the world, according to a new study – Python produces large slabs of white meat similar to chicken filet.
Scientists are learning more about what sources of meat could serve as more sustainable alternatives to beef, pork and chicken.
Python meat could offer a form of meat much less carbon intensive than the current options, according to researchers who studied farms in Southeast Asia for two species of pythons — reticulated and Burmese — for 12 months.
Farmed python meat may offer a more sustainable alternative to other farmed meat because they can reproduce rapidly, even when food is not abundantly available, according to a study published in Scientific Reports on Thursday.
Pythons have an “extreme biology and evolutionary slant toward extreme resource and energy efficiency,” Patrick Aust, conservation specialist at nonprofit People for Wildlife and co-author of the paper, told ABC News. Since pythons are an “ambush predator” that chooses prey up to 100% their own weight, they can survive for prolonged periods of time between meals, Aust said.
“These animals are extremely good converters of food and particularly protein,” he said. “Literally, they are specialists and making the most of very little.”
The pythons were fed on a weekly basis a variety of locally sourced proteins, such as wild-caught rodents and fishmeal, and were regularly measured and weighed over a 12-month period, according to the paper. The authors found that both species of python grew rapidly — by up to 46 grams per day — with females seeing higher growth rates than males.
Pythons are also able to survive extreme events, Aust said. When supply chains get disrupted — as displayed during the COVID-19 pandemic — it can have a “catastrophic impact” on global livestock systems.
“During COVID-19, there were a large number of chickens and pigs that had to be culled because there were minor disruptions in supply chains,” Aust said. “Farmers couldn’t handle even that disruption.”
Pythons, however, were shown during the study period to survive prolonged periods of disruptions, or extreme weather events, without suffering any ill effect,” Aust said, adding that they were at the “whims of the seasons” in southern Vietnam and Cambodia.
“They can pick up at the end of those periods,” he said.
The world is in need of high-quality protein with much less of a carbon footprint — especially as the effects of climate change continue to worsen, the researchers said.
“We really are running out resources, whilst at the same time, the demand for high quality nutrients is going up,” Aust said.
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While Aust and his family regularly eat python meat — often fried with a “nice crispy crunch” — he added that it will take a long time for the Western world to culturally adapt to the thought of eating snakes.
“This isn’t going to be a cure-all for our protein needs, but perhaps will play an important role in the future in terms of acceptability palatability in the Western palate,” Aust said.
…
“Pythons can feel pain and fear, and they don’t want to be slaughtered any more than a cow, pig, chicken, or dog does,” Danielle Katz, PETA senior director of campaigns, told ABC News in a statement. “Experts agree that vegan eating is crucial for stopping the climate catastrophe in its tracks, so adding more animals to the already billions who suffer and die for food every year would be as misguided as it is cruel.”
Addendum from Charles
Despite the knee-jerk antagonistic reaction associating python farming with the “eat the bugs” attack on traditional food supplies, I see no problem with python farming at all. If it is cost efficient and produces appetizing and nutritious meat, how is this different from, say fish farming?
How does Python taste, really?
I actually had it once. That I cannot remember how it tasted is telling.
And what does it eat? Are they vegans?
A very good question, George. You could feed the small ones with rats and mice. The bigger ones could eat sheep or goats or vegans.
As vegans usually leave a bad taste in those (meat lovers) around them, I wounder if running them through a python would improve their appeal.
Cattle are vegan. I’d much rather eat a vegan than feed it to a snake
To get them to financially positive farming they need to be fed for at least 10 years. Pythons reach maturity at 3 years but weigh only 40 pounds by then. They Require feeding twice a week so will consume 100 mice or rats (depending on age and size) or 300 for 3 yrs.
Python’s Age Python’s Weight (Grams) Prey Size
Hatchling…45 to 80 g…Hopper mouse (7 to 12 g)
3 Months..120 to 220g…Fuzzy rat or small mouse (13 to 19 g)
6 Months…270 to 360g…Rat pup or adult mouse (20 to 30g)
1 Year…500 to 900 g…1 small rat or 1-3 adult mice (45 to 80 g)
Beyond 3 years rabbits are needed.
So Pythons not only have their own carbon footprint but their food supply does also
Farming 100 Pythons will give you 4000lbs of meat but will require raising over 30,000 Mice and rats and later thousands of rabbits.
All for 4000 lbs of protein.
Cattle is much better. They reach maturity and go to slaughter in about 18 months at 1100-1400lbs. They eat the food nature provides so in 18 months the same 4000lbs of protein can be gained from only 3 cows.
Cattle are better than snakes as you don’t have to raise their food.
Cattle are better than snakes as you get much more protein for minimal effort.
Cattle are better than Bugs because bugs is bugs
“Cattle are better than Bugs because bugs is bugs”
LOL! It’s true, of course. Apparently bugs like bugs, but (female) mosquitoes don’t.
Also, cattle make a good replacement for the 50 million (+or-) bison that were nearly wiped out in the 19th century. Good for the grasslands.
true re cage fed. but what about the massive burmese python problem in ?florida? all those illegals might like to go hunt free meat? along with all the handouts FJB is giving out
That’s what I was thinking… why not just farm the rabbits and eat them? Why bother with the snakes?
Better to eat the rabbits yourself.
Rabbits are not a good meat to subsist on; the meat is far too lean and protein rich for human digestion and will eventually lead to protein poisoning. Better to feed the rabbits to the snakes and eat the better snake meat.
Actually, rabbit is one of the healthiest, leanest, and most environmentally friendly meats you can eat. Compared to beef, pork, lamb, turkey, veal, and chicken, rabbit has the highest percentage of protein, the lowest percentage of fat, and the fewest calories per pound.
However the current global beef consumption is 130 Billion lbs and rabbits produce about 3 pounds of meat each so you would need 43-44B rabbits a year to replace beef.
Presuming you only spend 3 years growing the snake to 40 lbs you would need over 3 Billion snakes (and thereby 900 billion mice and rats as feed) harvested annually to replace beef
Only about 295 Million head of cattle are harvested annually
Since most people don’t eat enough protein, I don’t think we have a problem.
Cattle are better than snakes because they can be restrained with a simple and inexpensive fence. Even very large snakes can escape through a small gap.
Cattle are better than snakes because they can survive in colder climates.
and ruminants eat grass, rather than eating something which ate grass or grain.
Like everything, it tastes like chicken.
At least it did when I had it.
Same with crocodile, goanna, shark, and I’m told – humans.
(but not greenies. They taste like kale)
Supposedly, the name for people in New Guinea translated as “long pork”.
Apparently St. Patrick (seems appropriate to mention him) ridded Ireland of snakes by telling everyone they tasted like chicken.
I’ve heard that humans taste more like pork.
I’ve even heard that if you give a baby a bone marrow transplant with porcine marrow, they could accept pig organs as transplants later in life with little chance of rejection.
Iguanas, too.
I wouldn’t mind having a pair of python skin cowboy boots.
Or a bag.
No where near as tasty as Cobra.
I prefer a nice cold bottle of Cobra – very tasty!
Tastes like chicken.
I have eaten rattlesnake several times in my life. It is reasonably tasty, but unmemorable. A small snake, like a sidewinder, is mostly bone after being cooked. It is necessary to have a diamond back that is at least 4 or 5 feet in length to have enough meat to justify the risk in cornering and dispatching it, skinning and gutting it, and then cooking it.
I read somewhere that python meat has a problem. I think it was a taste issue, but I don’t remember exactly. I believe that the state of Florida is looking into encouraging people to eat pythons or their eggs.
I just did a quick search and it appears that high levels of mercury exist in Florida pythons. That isn’t surprising because methylmercury tends to concentrate at the top of the food chain. However, I don’t think that it is as much of a problem as implied. There is not a single, well-documented case of methylmercury poisoning in the US, probably because we cook our fish to avoid ingesting flatworms. Methylmercury has (according to the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics) a boiling point of 100 deg C. Cooking outdoors (I have eaten rattlesnake grilled) or under an exhaust fan should remove most of the mercury. Unfortunately, it seems that the government agencies working with fish do their analyses on raw fish instead of cooked fish.
If the meat is anything like chicken, bringing it to 100C would be seriously overcooking it, the infamous “rubber chicken” theme.
When I lived in Japan years ago, I remember browsing the supermarkets, seeing crickets, sea urchins, or unrecognizable stuff, and thinking, you can’t pay me to eat that. Ditto for the “beyond meat” “impossible burgers” and other plant-based fake meat. I’ll have my red meat and poultry, thank you.
Sea urchin is…challenging. I’d eat that before cuttlefish though. Gator is pretty good, why didn’t they think of that?
Actually, sea urchin is not bad. I grew up snorkeling from a very young age and we would often put a few sea urchin in the catchbag. We would smash them open on the boat and eat the eggs/roe raw. I would never buy one though. How would you know if it was fresh?
Quite salty since they have just come out of the sea but a very mild flavour. We call them kina, which is the Maori name for them. Not everyone in New Zealand eats them but it is definitely normal here.
If you like the taste of caviar, you’ll love stingray flap. Spear it, gut and remove the sting. Onto a bed of fire coals. I didn’t time how long it was cooked. One concession to the white man’s world that weekend was a roll of toilet paper. I needed that next morning. My tutor in bush lore was Robert Tudawali, in the scrub outside Darwin for a weekend in1966.
My Japanese friend says that sea urchin is her favorite. I’ll pass.
Of course you can’t let even one get loose. And while we are at it, perhaps we should use snake eggs in the morning with our bacon (or bacon flavored snake).
I thought this had to be satire. Sadly, no. Another cockamamie idea from our SCIENCE! “elites” proffered as a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.
They must be bored or they wouldn’t play these games of creating an ideal world. I just wish people would stay out of my food choices.
What it doesn’t say is how many units of meat are needed per unit of python. It must be more efficient for us to eat grass-eaters than to eat meat-eaters like pythons. And I don’t think that farms of pythons feeding on live animals would go down any better with animal lovers.
would immediately slap into the whole farm-salmon problem… the amount of rats you’d have to high-intensity farm would be immense…
… that’s the whole benefit to eating beef, the cows don’t chew holes in the wires in the roof and their food doesn’t scamper off into the nearest city to do the same.
Eat, or be eaten?
I got it. Eating beef is not sustainable. Feed beef to pythons, and it becomes sustainable. And maybe woke.
Feeding humans to pythons, and it becomes really sustainable. At least that’s what the Misanthropic Marxist Malthusians would have you believe on the basis of their media offerings.
Does that option lead to a new python description on the Woke menu we are asked to adopt?
Soylent Green Python?
Florida Encourages Residents to Eat Wild Pythons to Help Combat Overpopulation
https://www.allrecipes.com/article/florida-python-study/
Overpopulation of which, snakes or humans?
Let the illegal migrants (invaders) eat the snakes in the Florida everglades and the feral pigs in the corn fields. Kill two invaders with one invader, but no Darth Vader.
I’d rather be in Tijuana eating barbequed iguana. (Mexican Radio song)
That’s Florida too.
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/state/-chicken-of-the-trees-people-are-eating-iguanas-in-florida
In Costa Rica iguanas are called ‘pollos de palo’ or tree chickens.
The illegal migrants are fleeing the drug lords that are in power because of American drug use.
More humans live off of goat meat than any other meat. There’s more lbs of beef, pork, poultry and
fish produced but goat is #1. I learned that in Africa..
While we’re fattening up the pythons before slaughter, could we not have them crawl around some kind of treadmill that would drive a generator to power millions of homes with green electricity? Asking for a friend.
A local McDonald’s was shut down due to a rat infestation. Serve python instead. They can eat the rats
Its is not so much eating python I object to…
What I really object to is them trying to use the silly idea of “carbon efficiency” as a sales point.
IT DOESN’T MATTER.
It is all part of the CARBON CYCLE that sustains life on this planet.
That’s my opinion of these stupid “climate change” remedies. I say, “You first and for several years. If it actually works, then maybe I might not laugh at your stupidity.” We know these self appointed “elites” aren’t going to do any of this nonsense.
“ it will take a long time for the Western world to culturally adapt to the thought of eating snakes.”
Wrong. Grilled rattlers are commonly eaten.
However, before farming of pythons is started, why not collect all the ones destroying wildlife in the southern states?
I should mention I live in cattle country. Rocky pastures, grass, and cold winters. The rattlers tend to stay in the nearby hills.
Australian Aborigines used to eat snakes, goannas etc etc.. some probably still do
Alternate with Kangaroo and wallaby, witchetty-grubs…. fairly good meat intake.
Only has witchetty once….. not a fan !!
ps.. probably crocodile was on menu in some areas… or they were on the croc’s menu 😉
Pretty slow growth rates of 46grams/day !!
Compared to pigs: 700 grams/day birth to market at 110 kg liveweight.
And a pretty ordinary feed conversion (FCR) ratio of 4.1:1 (ie 4.1 kg of food to make 1 Kg of carcass (meat with bone in):
Pigs run at about 2.5:1. (ie 2.5 kg of food to make 1 Kg of carcass (meat with bone in)
Chickens outperform pigs with an FCR of 1.5:1.
Since the pythons aren’t herbivores, the feed conversion rate of their feed needs to be factored in as well.
Actually, 4.1:1 is pretty poor for a poikilotherm, so perhaps the 4.1:1 includes the FCR of the rodents. It would be more efficient to eat the rabbits rather than feed them to the snakes – there are meat breeds of them.
You don’t want to be eating just rabbit though – look up ‘rabbit starvation’ and ‘protein poisoning’. Rabbit mixed with other meats or as a very occasional meal is ok but just eating rabbit will kill you eventually.
I don’t know if that applies as much to the meat breed rabbits.
Feral rabbits were a very common source of meat during the Depression, and the rabbit plague before the introduction of myxomatosis. I don’t think there were many large portions, and it was mostly in stews. People tended to have a couple of cups of tea with sugar at most meals as well.
The brief protein poisoning pieces I just read indicate it’s more a case of dietary imbalance, with high protein and low energy (fat or carbohydrates) I think rabbit stew (with lots of spuds) or rabbit and damper would sort of work.
Pretty much the only thing that would work is to eat rabbit with extra fat – it’s that lack of fats that is the problem.
I didn’t go into it in depth. The summaries I read said fat or carbs.
How does rabbit compare to skinless chicken? That’s claimed to be low fat.
Turkey has the most protein/calorie of what is traditionally thought of as “meat”. Shrimp, haddock, pollack, tuna and some other fish have a higher ratio.
It’s called “rabbit poisoning” or “mal de caribou” but it’s a dietary imbalance from eating too much protein and not enough fat and carbohydrates. Anyone eating only meat or fish with no vegetables, nuts, grains, etc. can get too much protein which is bad for the kidneys and liver.
“The world is in need of high-quality protein with much less of a carbon footprint.”
One thing we know about snakes–they don’t leave a footprint.
chuckle. !!
Can we feed climate scientists, climate journalists, climate diplomats, and such like to the pythons?
I don’t think even pythons can stomach those.
I don’t think it would be considered edible even by FDA standards.
Putrefied, rotten flesh…. feed it to the carrion birds… oh wait ..
… they are the human equivalent of carrion birds.
“The world is in need of high-quality protein with much less of a carbon footprint “
When will the cow farts lie be challenged?
Grazing animals would be one of the best ways of incorporating CO2 into the soil.
Here is why this makes no sense. Pythons are obligate carnivores. In order to feed them you would have to raise animals like cows or sheep that are herbivores and then feed them to the pythons. Clearly, we don’t need the pythons to be intermediaries, we can eat the cows and sheep without their help and cut out the middle man. if you want to harvest wild pythons. Fine. Chop them up and feed them to the pigs Then turn the pigs into bacon. mmmmm bacon.
Bacon!
Baloney, ruminants will always be a far more efficient source of animal protein. They are a walking fermentation system taking low grade plant lignocellulose and turning it into protein.
I have nothing against python husbandry, but do it because you have an economic case for it, not because it is less carbon intense, it simply isn’t.
Basic problem with all such ideas. Ruminant meat is SO nutritious because it is high in protein AND FATE
Animals such as snakes – no. Insects? Well, one, chitin is indigestible for humans, and worse, inflammatory.
Go full carnivore, and thrive. After all, disregarding our precursors – Homo sapiens has been around c 250k years. Until the advent of agriculture, some 6000 years back, it was meat, meat, meat with seasonal fruits and berries, honey and the odd root.
We are completely adapted to a meat only diet; our short gut and high stomach acid designed to deal with this.
You can live a full and very healthy life on beef alone. Indeed, Victorian doctors prescribed beef and water to fix diabetes and the Lion’s diet stopped my wife’s “terminal” bone cancer in its tracks. And she is not alone in this it seems.
“and the odd root.”
… Yet the population expanded !!
Somebody had to go there 🙂
There are a number of nutrients that don’t exist in meat that are required for humans to remain healthy.
Yup, odd roots apparently!
The same goes for any food. That’s why man is omnivorous.
until the population density gets too high and they try to kill each other like a full washer load of pajama bottoms the problem is you can’t just farm the pythons, you have to farm their food source AND that food source’s food source… easier to just eat barley and steak
It’s carbon dioxide not carbon and it doesn’t matter
on X and Dailymail theyre running the scare story about the harvesting of python skins for bags belts etc. if theyre being bred n killed for that then eating the meat at least makes full use of them. personally Ill stick with chicken, as wild rodents in asia as a food source might be less than healthy parasite etc wise
The loonies assure us cattle, sheep, pig and even fish farming is inhumane and produces low grade meat stuffed full of antibiotics.
So why does python farming suddenly become acceptable, because the vegans are scared of them or something? I guess spider farming is next then.
And don’t pythons fart?
Looking on the bright side. If Python took over from beef, it would streamline the McDonalds preparation process. No need to mince them up and make into round pats to sit between the burger bun. Just slice the perfectly round Python at the required thickness once they have reached bun size diameter. Very efficient, is the skin edible? Maybe the skins could be given away to the customers so they can fashion their own snakeskin something? A ‘win win’ all round as they used to say in the consultancy mad world of past times.😊
“Maybe the skins could be given away to the customers so they can fashion their own snakeskin something?”
Snakeskin plastic fork holder?
But you might have to watch out for bones if they just sliced out round patties.
OOH! Sell them as including free toothpicks!
Snek are good! And no, it doesn’t taste like chicken unless you put chicken seasoning on it.
Do Pythons fart? Just curious.
Actually, the only Python I’d be interested in is made by Colt Firearms. Blued with a 4″ barrel would be preferable.
I have a 6″ full target I bought in 1981. Beautifully made.
Charles, Tyrus, who raises pythons, does not agree with your assessment, Check out his comments on the Gutfeld show.
How do you herd them?
The left has gone far beyond absurd, hare-brained schemes into continuous self-parody.
Sort of reminds of what outdoor humorist, Patrick F. McManus, had in one of his stories.
His wife was reading an article that said cattails (the plant) are good to eat. He corrected her by saying, “No. Cattails are edible. If they were “good” to eat they’d sell them in grocery stores.”
Let the market, not the Government, decide if people want to eat python burgers.
“The pythons were fed on a weekly basis a variety of locally sourced proteins, such as wild-caught rodents and fishmeal,”
How do you get a python to eat fishmeal?
Just curious.
Seasoning on the mice?
Yet another non solution to a non problem.
People can raise and eat all the pythons they want I could care less. It won’t make a damn bit of difference to the climate and I wouldn’t be making a difference changing my protein source to python.
This is stupid.
The concern with beef is the CO2 released in it’s production. The reason people started raising livestock is because they convert cellulose to meat. So undigestible (for humans) input becomes food. Eating snakes requires you to convert meat to meat. So CO2 impact depends on what the snake food is. I am guessing the analysis didn’t consider this adequately. Very little cellulose I suspect. I don’t think the science would support this as sustainable.
This was my thought with helping control the population of pythons in south Florida. Get then on the “Starters” menu along with Lionfish and gator. But there is a problem. They are reported to have a high mercury content. So it sounds like we just get snake skin boots.
Just to be on the forward edge, I’ve filed for a Trademark on the yet to be formed fast food franchise for the Python Burger to be called “The Monty”.