A recent news story about a python swallowing a gator has been receiving a lot of attention. It's already been posted in the forum (by Stephen), but I've been getting so many emails about it that I decided to post it here as well. These are the facts, as I understand them: The body of a six-foot gator was found last week in the Everglades, inside of a python. The python had tried to swallow the gator, but this caused its stomach to burst open. It's stomach subsequently burst open. (Must have been an unpleasant way for the python to die.) I don't see any reason to doubt this information. Skip Snow, the biologist who found the bodies of the python and gator, seems like a credible source. The unresolved question, as Snow states, is why the python swallowed the gator, and under what circumstances. Did the python attack the gator while it was alive? Or did the python try to swallow a dead gator? No one knows. Either way, that was a pretty suicidal python. Inevitably this will add fuel to all those urban legends about people eaten by snakes.