Answer:
The raccoons, marsh rabbits, opossums and other small, warmblooded animals are gone. Or.. almost gone, because Burmese pythons seem to have eaten them. The marsh’s weird outdoor quiet is the deep, endlessly patient, laser-focused quiet of these invasive predators.
Scientists say that the snakes are responsible for a recent 90 to 99 percent drop in the small mammal population in the national park.
No one knows how many pythons are out there now. Estimates run from 10,000 to perhaps hundreds of thousands. A problem with trying to count them is that they’re what scientists call “cryptic”—hard to detect.