Python [Snake] Meat Could Be a Sustainable, Nutritious Food Source, Scientists Say

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• horse_battery_staple@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  When will they be sustainable? What’s their main food source? How is that food source more efficient than grain/grass?

  source

  • airrow@hilariouschaos.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    article:

    After studying more than 4,600 Burmese and reticulated pythons on commercial farms in Vietnam and Thailand, they found the snakes had a more efficient food conversion ratio than salmon, pigs, cows, chicken and crickets. The snakes went long periods without eating but did not lose much of their body mass as a result; they also required very little water. On top of all that, they ate food that would not have been used otherwise, known as waste meat, such as wild-caught rodents and stillborn pigs.

    says more in article like that. and yet:

    Scientists also say more research needs to be conducted on the nutritional content of snake meat, as well as the broader environmental implications—and potential ripple effects—of commercial python farms.

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    • horse_battery_staple@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      More research into the ripple effects

      is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

      Pythons are a problem in Florida, I’m not arguing against that. Building a profit motive around them is counter productive to lessening their ecological impact.

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  • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    At this point they are a widely spread invasive species in the southern US. There are an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 pythons in the Everglades alone. They commonly eat raccoon, opossum, rabbit, fox, bobcat, and other mid-size mammalian species. I think the idea is less to farm them and more to cull them from the wild where they grow unchecked and damage the native ecosystem.

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    • horse_battery_staple@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      That doesn’t make them a food source. Also making them a food source would incentivize some one to breed or increase the extent population.

      If we want to control the Python population we need to do so with CRISPR, or birth control, or nest culling.

      Injecting a profit motive into controlling invasive species often does not work out. Look to wild boars, pigeons or lampreys for proof.

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