How 22 python hatchlings came to life in 37 days after the eggs and mother python were rescued from drain in Mumbai

On May 18, while carrying out pre-monsoon desilting work in one of the drains at Mumbai’s Eastern Express Highway (EEH), a group of workers appointed by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) discovered a nine-foot reptile curled up underneath a culvert near Kannamwar Nagar in Vikhroli (East).

It did not take much time for the workers to realise that the reptile was an Indian Rock Python that was protecting its nearly two dozen eggs.

Within minutes, the workers made a distress call to the Maharashtra Forest Department, following which a three-member team came to the spot.

“We found that it was a female python and it had laid eggs recently. We rescued it from the spot and brought it to our shelter home,” Pawan Sharma, honorary wildlife warden and president of RAWW, told The Indian Express Tuesday.

Sharma said that his NGO gets rescue calls of this sort every year during the monsoon, mainly during waterlogging in Mumbai, when reptiles get washed away from their original habitat and end up in a different place.

“According to the rules of the Wildlife Protection Act, we cannot keep the python with us. Therefore, we released it in the natural habitat and our objective was to artificially hatch the eggs,” Sharma said.

For artificially hatching the eggs, the zoologists used a plastic container as an incubator.

Zoologist Chinmay Joshi who carried out the process told The Indian Express that the container was filled with natural elements like soil, coconut husk and activated charcoal.

Joshi said that no artificial ingredient was used inside the incubator and items like activated charcoal filters out the gas and coconut husk has antibacterial properties.

“We would monitor the temperature continuously during the entire process of incubation and would maintain an average range of 21 and 23 degrees Celsius, while the humidity would range between 65% and 80%. This temperature and humidity range would be similar if they were hatched under natural conditions,” Joshi said.

When the temperature would fall below normal levels they used warm water to regulate it, he added.

Joshi said that the average cycle of incubation of rock python eggs ranges between 60 and 90 days and the rescued eggs were with them for 37 days.

“The hatchlings started coming out on Monday and by Tuesday, all the 22 eggs got hatched and the baby pythons were immediately released in their natural habitat,” he added.

Joshi said that earlier similar methodologies have been followed to hatch eggs of several other reptiles like checkered Keelback water snakes, Montane Trinket snakes and Monitor Lizards.

“Our objective was to save as many eggs as we can. Here we have achieved a 100 per cent success rate mainly because we were able to replicate the entire natural habitat which included perfect temperature regulation as well,” Sharma said.