Wild Carpet Snake Versus Feral Rat

Wild Carpet Python Eating a Rat As night falls in a quiet Brisbane suburb in Queensland, Australia, the backyard comes to life with possums, rats and... a hungry coastal carpet python! We've been quite unsuccessful in catching these rats, but luckily for us this magnificent coastal carpet python, about seven feet long, came out of the jungle to assist us. I was able to film this happy meal using my Hikmicro thermal imaging camera, and then my iPhone as the lovely reptile gracefully departed and vanished back into the vegetation. The colouration on these coastal carpet pythons is absolutely stunning, an incredibly vivid pattern. These snakes are quite peaceful and really useful in controlling feral rats. Like all snakes, they're best left alone and admired from a distance. Snakes don't produce the same amount of heat that mammals do, so are more difficult to spot using thermal imaging. So it was quite interesting to see how consuming the warm-blooded rat affected the body heat of the python. This was one of those wonderful little wildlife encounters that made me feel really glad to be able to experience it and share it. #python #snake #reptiles