South Florida snake wrangler Kevin Pavlidis, known online as 'Snakeaholic,' captured the largest reticulated python ever measured in Puerto Rico after receiving a report that the invasive snake was trying to eat a pet cat.

The homeowners managed to scare the snake away and save the cat, but Pavlidis tracked it into the jungle and located it in about 20 minutes, seeing only a few inches of white skin on its chin at first. The cat's fate after the encounter was not reported.

His team, working with the Puerto Rico group Proyectos Retic, wrestled the snake back to the street and measured it on camera, confirming a length of 18 feet, 4 inches — eight people stood shoulder-to-shoulder holding the python for photos.

The 18-foot, 4-inch catch is the longest live reticulated python ever captured in Puerto Rico, but it falls far short of the species' global benchmarks.

The longest measured reticulated python on record was a 23-foot, 8-inch female called 'The Baroness,' or Ibuan, from the Maros region of South Sulawesi in Indonesia, and BroBible notes an unverified 1912 report of a 32-foot, 8-inch individual that was never confirmed.

Reticulated pythons hold the world record as the longest snake species, and they are distinct from the Burmese pythons that have overrun South Florida. Pavlidis posted the full video of the record-setting catch and measurement to his YouTube channel.

Pavlidis has spent nine years hunting invasive Burmese pythons in Florida and says he has built a reputation as the state's best python hunter.

When he learned a reticulated python population was developing in Puerto Rico, he saw a new challenge in learning a different species and its behavior, and was happy to offer his skills to help the island's people and wildlife.

He frames the work as saving native animals that invasive predators would otherwise eat.

The situation mirrors Florida's Burmese python crisis in that both involve large constrictors breeding outside their native range, and Florida's standard response is humane capture and dispatch to stop further breeding.

According to Pavlidis, the bulk of Puerto Rico's reticulated python population began about 25 years ago and has been breeding and expanding its range across the island ever since.

Because Puerto Rico is only about a 15th the size of Florida, he says the population may already be too established to realistically remove every invasive python, but that does not make removal any less worthwhile.

One striking difference from Florida: Burmese pythons there mostly stay in swamps, while Puerto Rico's reticulated pythons frequently show up in people's houses, especially where there are chicken coops or pets they can eat.

He called the snakes an unbelievably large threat to the island's delicate ecosystem, while stressing it is not the snake's fault but another human error in introducing a non-native animal.

The stakes are reproductive. BroBible reports that a large reticulated python can lay anywhere from 20 to 100 eggs at a time, with larger females typically producing clutches of 40 to 80, which leads to exponential growth in invasive populations if left unchecked.

That math is why removing even one breeding-age snake can slow the rapid population growth seen elsewhere.

Pavlidis says the island's population is still relatively small, but warns that without sustained removal work it could easily become as serious a problem as Florida's, and he and Proyectos Retic are doing their best to slow the spread as much as possible.

His record catch is presented as one more step toward restoring the balance of Puerto Rico's ecosystem.