2013 Python Challenge kicks off this weekend in Florida

Florida Trains Hunters In Python Eradication

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Brian Jones (L) and Ismael Vasquez hold a Burmese Python that was being used for hands on training during a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission nonnative snake hunt training session on February 22, 2010 in Miami, Florida. The training session showed prospective hunters how to identify, stalk, capture and remove nonnative reptiles during the hunting season which runs from March 8 to April 17. Some experts believe more than 100,000 non-native Burmese pythons inhabit the Florida Everglades and are damaging the region's endangered wildlife.

This Saturday will not be a good day for Burmese Pythons in Southern Florida. That's when the Python Challenge starts, a government-sponsored, month-long snake hunt, complete with cash prizes for catching the most and longest pythons.

For answers to all the questions you have about this, and we do too, we turn to Frank Mazzotti, professor of wildlife ecology at the University of Florida who helped design the Python Challenge.