Urgent warning as 18ft long ‘pet' PYTHON on the loose in UK countryside after being dumped by its owner
ONE of the world's longest snakes is at large — after five were illegally dumped by their owner in the countryside.
The 18ft pythons are believed to have been kept as pets before being abandoned.
Four were recaptured by police but they are still hunting for the missing reptile.
Dog owners are being warned to keep pets on leads in the Twigmoor and Cleatham areas of rural Lincolnshire where the reticulated pythons were found.
Humberside Police say the snakes will attack only to defend themselves but can 'squeeze the life' out of their prey.
A spokesman said: 'So far four snakes have been captured by colleagues who work with exotic animals.
'They are believed to be Reticulated Pythons. We suspect that one snake may currently still be out in the wild.
'The reticulated Python is the longest species on earth. It is a non venomous constrictor snake. In the wild, they will kill their prey by biting it and then coiling around it to literally squeeze the life out of it.
'In the pet trade, these come in many colours. An 18ft Snake found at Manton is a wild type, but the other three are a mixture of two Albinos and what we think is a Pied Golden Child Morph.
'In the event that you find one in the wild in the UK, please call police immediately. DO NOT try to catch it yourself, keep an eye on it and give a What3Words location to the police so it can be assessed by an expert and collected appropriately.
'We would advise keeping dogs on a lead in the areas where these snakes were found.
'These Snakes will not attack you. They will only try to defend themselves if they feel threated. We suspect that the snakes that have been dumped were pets and this will make them less likely to bite.
'Please if you have a pet that you can no longer keep for whatever reason, please take it to an exotic animal shop or animal rescue. DO NOT release them into the wild.
'If you have any information on the release of these snakes please contact Humberside Police Rural Task Force at RTF@humberside.police.uk or call 101 quoting investigation reference 25000081788."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
So many young women who've never smoked are getting lung cancer. Now scientists think they've found two shocking causes - and reveal what to look out for
It was the end of GCSEs, and Amy Clark was celebrating with friends when she tumbled off a fence she had been sitting on and landed badly on her back. The 16-year-old from Bristol was fine at first, but over the next two years she suffered intermittent back pain, which she put down to the fall.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Diary of a GCSE pupil with 27 exams: ‘I woke up screaming'
It's finally over. After almost 40 hours of exams spread over five weeks, I have officially left secondary school. Fingers crossed I will never sit another GCSE. Worse than sitting the exams themselves was the fear leading up to them. Like a lot of friends in my school year, I suffer badly from anxiety. It got so bad that in January, I convinced myself I couldn't do it. That's when Mum got help from Tej Samani, a performance coach, who helped me realise I was panicking because I felt so overwhelmed. It felt like my entire future was hanging in the balance. That it would all come down to my performance in 27 exams in ten subjects — each lasting a maximum of two hours and 15 minutes. Nine out of my ten GCSEs were 100 per cent exam based. Only food technology has 50 per cent coursework. Apparently over the past 15 years coursework has been phased out, which is the reason why I'm sitting so many. • My son had given up on GCSEs. Then he met the exam guru People say that exams are getting easier — but I bet they never had to sit 27 of them in just a few weeks. It was a more intense experience than I had prepared for. Sometimes I sat three exams in one day, which is quite a lot for a 15-year-old. (I don't turn 16 until mid-July.) Here is the diary I kept of my GCSE journey. My first exam is English literature paper one. It's one hour and 45 minutes, but I get 25% extra time because I was diagnosed with ADHD at the start of the year — so for me it's just over two hours. GCSEs are graded 1 (the lowest) to 9 (the highest), with 5 being a strong pass. Going into the exam at 8.40am, I feel quite stressed and think about how the result of this will determine where I go to sixth form — I need 5s in Maths and English to get into my first choice. But when I get into the exam hall and see the questions on Frankenstein and Macbeth I relax a little. Though I do struggle with the silence: the exam hall is unnervingly quiet which makes my anxiety worse. On Tuesday it's four hours of religious education and the first of my biology papers. It is a relief to begin counting down the number of exams. On Thursday my first maths exam begins at 8.40am. I need a high pass to get into the sixth form of my choice. I was worried this additional pressure would make me panic but I'm happy with how it went. I end the week with my first history paper: 'Medicine Through Time' — another two hours — but again, it goes really well. Mum said I could let my hair down a bit over the weekend so I'm seeing friends. My girlfriend lives in Warwickshire (we're in London) so we can't see each other much during exams, which I am finding tough. But once they're done we'll have the entire summer. A bit of a disaster over the weekend. I asked Mum whether my friend could stay over on Saturday night and we played on the Xbox until 4am. Mum heard us and was furious, so despite my late night I got up at 8.30am on Sunday to revise chemistry. On Sunday afternoon, I went to the library with friends to study. We went to the chicken shop on the high street. Big mistake! By the time I got home I was feeling really sick and Mum thought I must have food poisoning. I'm still feeling ill this morning so Mum calls the school to warn them. I sit my first chemistry exam with a bucket next to my desk. On Tuesday, English literature paper two could not have gone better, but things take another bad turn on Wednesday when I wake up screaming. I often have panic attacks through the night but thankfully, this was just a bad dream. Today I have French reading and listening, then later in the week a second RE exam on Judaism. • How to talk to your children about exams On Thursday, Physics paper one — the hardest so far — and English language paper one. In the afternoon I can chill out a bit. Halfway through now, and time for half-term. I wish coursework formed a bigger part of my GCSEs. Mum said there was a lot more when she was at school. It would be done in a classroom, spread over the whole year, meaning less depended on this 'sink or swim' moment. After 12 days without an exam it feels painful getting back into the rhythm. Maths paper two is much harder than the first one. I then have my final RE paper in the afternoon. By the end of the day I'm definitely feeling a bit of exam fatigue. I can't seem to see the end in sight. Thursday means history papers on the Cold War and Henry VIII. They both go fairly well, which is a huge relief. The day ends with a French writing paper which is difficult as it's my least favourite subject, but I hope I will scrape a pass. I barely register the exams now, as there have been so many. I just want them to be over so I can get on with my life. In my friendship group, no one suffered with the pressure as badly as we thought they would. There was a lot of build up. People thought they would break down, but when it came down to it we all just managed. After English language paper two, I go with my dad, brother and sister to see Sam Fender in the evening. It's good to be out of the house. Weekends are starting to get tedious and I spent much of it at the library. Mum is not keen on letting anyone stay over after the last time. I start the week with biology paper two, which goes well. Then Spanish on Tuesday and my final history exam on Nazi Germany. Wednesday is my final maths exam, followed by chemistry on Friday. I'm near the end now and it's hard to stay focused. My final science exam is physics on Monday and Spanish on Tuesday morning. I realise that despite being given extra time — I haven't used it once. My final exam is food technology. It was my lowest priority so I didn't really revise until the very end but I feel it went OK. That's it. They are all over. • Are we nearly there yet? The extended hell of GCSE exam season I'm happy with how I handled the exams, but I think exams and the curriculum needs to change to reflect what's going on in the world a bit more. I don't feel like some of the stuff I learned is going to really help me in life. I am keeping everything crossed for the results I need to do A-levels in business, history and politics. In the meantime I am going to enjoy my free time, my friends and the longest of summer holidays — ten whole weeks.
Times
2 hours ago
- Times
Eat with your back to the wall: smart ways to keep seagulls at bay
The attack came silently. A flash of white, a blur of feathers and the ice cream was gone. My four-year-old son was left staring at the stub of a cone in his hand. The herring gull, dwarfing my little boy with its four-foot wing span, soared away over the Dorset beach, its prize grasped between its claws. My son was too shocked to even cry. This will be familiar to anyone who has spent any time in a British seaside town. Wherever there are fish and chip shops, pasty stalls or ice cream kiosks, flocks of seagulls gather like pickpockets looking for an easy mark. Even in many inland areas, they are considered a nuisance. With sunseekers flocking to the beach this weekend as temperatures are expected to top 34C, gulls are likely to get a windfall. Neeltje Boogert, associate professor in animal behaviour at the University of Exeter's Penryn Campus outside Falmouth, Cornwall, is gloomy about seagull-human relations. 'I think it is getting worse, but the reason for that is we have more and more people carrying food around like a walking buffet,' she said. 'Gulls are a polarising species — some people hate them with a vengeance. But it is a bit perverse to blame the wildlife for being in our space when we took away their space first.' Seagulls are protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act, so culling or harming the birds is illegal. This is for good reason. Numbers of herring gulls, the most common gull species, have dropped by 72 per cent since 1969 across the British Isles, a significant enough fall to put them on the 'red list' of threatened species. Of those which remain, three quarters are thought to now live in urban areas, attracted by stable rooftop nesting sites and abundant sources of food. Many towns and cities have scrambled for ways to contain the issue. Aberdeen has tried bringing in a hawk to scare off its resident seagull colony. Other authorities have tried ultrasound deterrents or lasers. Councillors in Worcester even proposed lacing food with oral contraceptives to bring down numbers. But Boogert said it is important first to seek to understand gull behaviour. In Britain four gull species commonly nest in urban areas: herring gulls, kittiwakes and lesser and great black-backed gulls. Of these, only herring gulls will steal food from humans. Even then, the vast majority of herring gulls prefer to seek natural sources of food rather than chips or pasties. 'They are like football hooligans,' Boogert said. 'Just a few of them are giving the rest a bad name.' • Town besieged as 'hooligan' kittiwakes return in force Boogert and her colleagues have spent years studying gulls in Falmouth. 'We have found 90 per cent of parents feed their chicks with worms and beetles. It is not human food that they are giving to the them.' In one study, the scientists tried to tempt herring gulls with food to see how they reacted. 'Only about one in four gulls would come down at all. Most are very hesitant about coming anywhere near people.' Boogert believes the few aggressive gulls, such as the one that stole my son's ice cream, are displaying learnt behaviour. Stealing tourists' picnics is not innate or instinctive — it is something that has been taught to them by their parents. 'When we have observed juveniles, we have seen they are really bad at stealing food,' she said. 'Adults are successful about half the time.' But they have learnt how to up the odds. 'If there's a superabundance of food — a big picnic on the beach, for example — they will call other gulls. They will recruit them to exploit the food source and give them safety in numbers.' She said it is easy to resent this behaviour, but added: 'They're just doing what we would do. They like an easy meal in the same way we do. It is why fast-food chains are so popular. For them, it is much easier to steal food from people than it is to go find some fish in the sea.' When looking for food, gulls will avoid conflict, she said. It is why the gull targeted my youngest son, rather than his older brother or me or my wife. It is why it got the ice cream without leaving a scratch on my boy, a precision attack with zero collateral damage. 'When they are looking for food, they're not out to get us.' But she added: 'It's quite a different story when they are protecting their chicks.' This is part of the reason gulls have such a reputation for aggression. As the RSPB puts it: 'Gulls are excellent parents and invest a lot of time into caring for their chicks. Dive-bombing is an instinctive behaviour to defend their offspring when they feel threatened.' During the nesting season in May and June, and when the chicks begin to fly the nest from June until August, protective gulls will attack any human, dog or other animal which comes near their offspring whether they are still in their nest or on their first tentative flights. 'When they perceive you as a potential killer of their babies, they will definitely swoop in,' said Boogert. 'When we are studying the colony we wear helmets, because they will go for your head.' Gulls will attack with claws or beaks, or even target would-be assailants with their droppings. If on the beach — and the chicks are nowhere in sight — there are some proven strategies to avoid having your ice cream stolen. First, make eye contact. 'If you look at the gull, it knows it has been caught red-handed in its intention — it will stay away,' Boogert said. Second, eat with your back to a wall. 'They will attack when they have a clear approach route and an exit route. The same goes for eating under a parasol or an umbrella or a roof. If they can't see their escape they will not attack.' Some coastal primary schools in Cornwall have put up lines of bunting in order to deter gulls. 'It blocks the access flight and exit flight.' Finally, carefully consider your beach snacks. 'Gulls want calorie-dense foods,' Boogert said. 'If you are eating a carrot, you will probably be OK.'
