Want a Sustainable Meal? Try Eating Python

Tastes just like chicken? Python meat apparently has a similar texture and taste to the white meat, but with less impact on the environment. According to ABC News, a new study published in Scientific Reports says these snakes would serve up an eco-friendlier portion of protein than poultry, pork, or red meat. This comes from a year-long study conducted at snake farms in Southeast Asia, where python already is regularly consumed. The paper says cold-blooded animals are "90% more energy efficient" in terms of agriculture. A few advantages python have over traditional western livestock include:

• Faster gestation: While a cow can produce an average of .8 calves in a year for consumption, and pigs between 22 to 27 piglets, a python lays 50 to 100 eggs in that same amount of time.
• Efficient makeup: Paper author Patrick Aust says pythons have an "extreme biology and evolutionary slant toward extreme resource and energy efficiency," and can go for a long time without food. "These animals are extremely good converters of food and particularly protein. Literally, they are specialists and making the most of very little."
• Weathering hard times: When times get tough, pythons are die-hard compared to livestock. The snakes can survive "prolonged periods of disruptions, or extreme weather events, without suffering any ill effect," says Aust. On the flipside, supply issues during the pandemic proved to have a "catastrophic impact" on livestock.

Anyone looking to test out their python recipes can start in Florida. Per the Hill, a 500-pound pile of Burmese pythons was recently discovered in public marsh land. Though the snakes aren't native to the sunshine state, 13,000 pounds of them have been removed since 2013 (largely due to the pet trade). But despite Florida's excess of python activity, animal rights groups like PETA would prefer you put down the python and eat some vegetable-based protein. "Pythons can feel pain and fear, and they don't want to be slaughtered any more than a cow, pig, chicken, or dog does," PETA's senior director of campaigns Danielle Katz tells ABC. (With warmer weather, expect more visits from snakes in general.)