A ball python from Leinwand’s lab. CREDIT: Yuxiao Tan. Compared with the hearts of pythons who hadn’t eaten, the fed pythons increased their own mass by close to 25 percent after eating .

A Japanese national is facing U.S. federal charges for what prosecutors say was an illegal reptile trafficking operation, shipping abroad hundreds of blood pythons, ball pythons, Mexican burrowing ...

Ball pythons in captivity therefore might have been missing out on important social time. “They like doing it,” Dr. Skinner said. The study’s finding underscores how much there is to learn, ...

The blood of fasted and fed pythons contained very different blends of fatty acids, and the team identified three that are particularly important – myristic acid, palmitic acid and palmitoleic acid.

Pythons can swallow extremely large prey like pigs or deer, and they remodel their organs to cope with their meals. Their intestines and liver nearly double in size and their hearts become 40 ...