Scientists examining poop from a Burmese python bagged in the Everglades discovered the ravenous snake had three deer inside. Scott Boback, the lead author of a study on the find, thinks the three-deer meal could be an indication of how efficiently the snakes have adapted to the marshes since they appeared in the 1980s. "[Pythons are] taking all that stuff that's out there and just making it more pythons," he said. After a snake wrangler caught the 14-foot female python with a bulging belly in June 2013, researchers performed a necropsy and found a "massive amount of fecal matter" in its intestines that included 12 hoofs. The contents turned out to be a record for python consumption: one adult deer and two fawns. Collectively, the deer weighed more than 160 pounds when eaten.

Warming will trigger more downpours

Extreme downpours will happen nearly three times as often in the United States by the end of the century, and six times more frequently in parts of the Mississippi Delta, according to a new study. Scientists have long pointed out that warmer air holds more moisture, so climate change will increase the frequency of extreme downpours. That increase has already started, they say, but new work with much stronger computer simulations shows just how bad it will get, and where. The high-resolution computer simulation — about 25 times better than other computer models — projects at least a fivefold increase in downpours in the Gulf Coast, Atlantic Coast and Southwest, according to a study in Nature Climate Change. The study's lead author said the entire U.S. will average a 180 percent increase in these types of downpours by 2100.

Female mantis evolved to be better hunter

It's common for female insects to be larger than the males. The bigger the female, the more eggs she can lay, is the usual explanation. Gavin Svenson, head of invertebrate biology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, has found another reason for size differences in some praying mantises of Southeast Asia. In the orchid mantises, the females, a rich creamy white with brown patches and flower-petal-mimicking lobes on their legs, are up to 4 inches long, much bigger than the males. The females evolved their size and coloring to both mimic flowers and to be large enough to prey on the bees and other larger insects they attracted. The males stayed small and camouflaged, so they can stay hidden even while they move around to seek out females. Svenson and his colleagues said this kind of evolutionary split between the sexes, based on one sex being a better predator, appears to be unique.

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