INVASIVE SPECIES: Tom Rahill, founder of Swamp Apes, handles a female Burmese python at the Everglades Holiday Park in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Along with the venomous lionfish, the Burmese python is perhaps the least welcome invasive species in Florida: lacking any natural predators, it has happily chomped its way through the state’s wildlife. Native to Southeast Asia, the Burmese pythons have become a plague in Florida. The South Florida Water Management District hired 25 contractors for the Python Elimination Programme, launched in 2017 to “humanely euthanise” the constrictors. — AFP