Pythons found showcasing 'incredibly unusual' behaviour at Aussie festival site

An Aussie snake catcher has described the moment he came across three coastal carpet pythons laying on their eggs, all within one square metre of each other, as "one of the craziest sights" he's ever seen.

Brandon Gifford told Yahoo News Australia that he got the call out to a property on Wednesday afternoon. "It was initially going to be two carpet pythons on a clutch of eggs and one clutch of eggs that had been disturbed, and that's why they were calling us, because someone had taken the python off her eggs and showed it to other people so they didn't want that to happen again."

The snakes were found at the site of the Woodford Folk Festival in Queensland, which is set to draw thousands of people to the area when it kicks off next week. But it was what happened next that shocked the experts at Sunshine Coast Snake Catchers 24/7.

Sight on 'another level'

"I got there and lifted the tarp and that mum [the one that had been picked up] had come back and gotten back on her clutch of eggs, so there were all three there and it was one of the craziest sites I've ever seen," Gifford said, adding that the snakes had about 50 to 60 eggs between them. "I've never come across that and I was so excited. For a snake person that's on another level. It is incredibly unusual. Like it's bizarre."

• Deadly backyard mistake Aussies are making as snake wolfs down beloved pet

• Aussies confused by 'distressing' snake detail in wild weather warning

• Viewers stunned as huge snake drops in on podcast: 'Can't get more Australian'

While communal laying is quite common in other snakes, it's not in coastal carpet pythons. Gifford says he, his colleagues and other experts in the field had ever heard of it happening before. "We're obviously in touch with a lot of herpetologists and us ourselves have been zookeepers for many years before we became snake catchers and we know people all over Australia and everyone we were talking to hadn't seen this before, so it became very exciting very quickly," he explained. "As soon as I got out of there and started talking to people, that's when I started realising that, yeah, a lot of people had never heard of this before."

Snakes separated from eggs

While Gifford said the three snakes laying on their eggs "was the cutest sight" and "like a little mother's meeting", the reptiles needed to be moved, which proved to be quite the operation. "I had to carefully take each one off and move each one into their own separate bag, and each clutch had to go into a separate container with substrate in it," he said, adding that he had to be careful to keep them in the same upright position.

"I took the mothers to the closest patch of bush and let them go, and the only reason we don't release them with the eggs anymore is that it has been tried and tested over many years and it can have success but more often than not it fails."

He explained that this is purely because the mums take time to find the perfect spot, with the perfect temperature and humidity. "They know exactly where they want to curl up and for us to try to put them in a random patch of bush and replicate that is near impossible."

While Gifford expressed concern for the mothers-to be, their maternal instincts and "the emotion of it", he said they're used to becoming separated from their eggs. "They will just go off because they're used to that as far as weather events go and all sorts of different triggers in the environment that will compromise the clutch or when the eggs hatch," he said.

The eggs, which take 30 to 40 days to hatch, have since been transferred to the Australian Zoo Wildlife Hospital to continue their incubation.

Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? Get our new weekly newsletter showcasing the week’s best stories.