A 13-foot Burmese python was recently confiscated from a residence in central New York, authorities said on Wednesday.
The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said it received a complaint about an illegally owned snake in the town of New Hartford on August 28. (A permit is required to own Burmese pythons in New York.)
When Environment Conservation Police Officer Jeff Hull responded to the complaint, he reportedly found the Burmese python, which is said to be still growing, in a 4-to-5-foot tank. Hull was able to identify the species of the snake by the arrowhead like design on its head, according to a news release from the Department of Environmental Conservation that was posted on Facebook.
The department said the python was found in good health, and it measured 13 feet 2 inches in length while weighing 80 pounds.
The snake "was seized and donated to Fort Rickey Discovery Zoo in Rome [New York], which has the required permits to possess it," the news release said.
The python's owner, who was not named in the Department of Environmental Conservation's news release, said that he had not been prepared for how fast the animal would grow and admitted he could no longer care for it.
"The owner of the snake was given tickets for possession of wildlife as a pet and for possessing dangerous wildlife without a permit," the release said.
Burmese pythons are nonvenomous constrictors that are among the largest snakes in the world.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Invasive Species Information Center, Burmese pythons are native to southeast Asia and were imported to the U.S. to be sold as pets. Wild populations then developed from pet pythons that escaped or were intentionally released.
Burmese pythons are said to have an especially large population in Florida, primarily in the Everglades ecosystem. It is difficult to estimate the size of the Burmese python population in Florida, because they are well-camouflaged and very hard to detect, but experts say there are most likely tens of thousands in the state.
Burmese pythons can grow to around 20 feet in length, although most specimens are significantly smaller.
In South Florida, for example, the average size for those removed from the environment is about 6 to 8 feet, but lengths of up to 19 feet have been recorded. This summer, a 215-pound female python was captured in southwest Florida -- the heaviest ever captured in the state.