A 16-foot long Burmese python has been found with three whole deer in its gut, a new study has revealed.
The snake was trapped and euthanised in the Florida Everglades in June 2013.
Researchers who conducted a necropsy on the creature subsequently discovered its record-breaking deer consumption, details of which have now been published in the journal BioInvasions Records.
Native to Southeast Asia, Burmese pythons are an invasive species in Florida, have become established in the 1990s.
According to lead researcher Scott Boback, an associate professor of biology at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania, the python probably consumed the deer over about 90 days - a relatively short period for a snake to have three such large meals.
"If a python is capable of eating three deer in three months," he told Live Science, "what else are they eating that we don't know about? We don't even know how many of them are out there [in the Everglades]."
Researchers suggested that the snake may have hidden in the water, allowing to get within striking distance of the deer when they were drinking.
Study co-authors Teresa Hsu and Suzanne Peurach, who performed the autopsy on the animal, found 14 lbs of fecal matter, equating to 13 per cent of its body mass. The fecal matter contained a large quantity of undigested fur, hooves, bones and teeth.
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