Features

TOKYO — He is the creator of one of the world’s best-known manga, but “One Piece” author Eiichiro Oda shuns stardom with a carefree attitude that evokes the beloved hero of his work.

The 47-year-old famously refuses to be referred to as “sensei”, an honorific typically used to address seasoned manga creators of his status.

He is even reputed to show up at fancy restaurants and hotels dressed exactly like “One Piece” protagonist and pirate Monkey D. Luffy, in a pair of short trousers and sandals.

“I want kids who read ‘One Piece’ to think of me as their neighbourhood brother,” media-shy Oda said in a rare 2017 interview, published in a special magazine to mark the 20th anniversary of the franchise.

“I know I’m now old enough to be more like their uncle... so maybe a funny, easy-going uncle.”

It is a modest aspiration for a man whose tale about aspiring “pirate king” Luffy and a motley crew of fellow adventurers earned him a Guinness World Record for “most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author”.

The cultural phenomenon that has sold about 500 million copies worldwide will mark the 25th anniversary of its serialisation.

It is now on the cusp of its final arc, set to begin in next week’s edition of Japan’s weekly Shonen Jump magazine.

“One Piece” follows straw hat-wearing Luffy and his team as they hunt for the titular treasure coveted by all pirates.

Loud, gluttonous and lovably simple-minded, Luffy is meant to be an embodiment of how Oda sees his stated target audience: teenage boys.

“Every week I ask myself to assess what I’ve drawn: ‘Would I have enjoyed reading this when I was 15?’” Oda said in 2009.

There are few swoon-worthy romances in the series, as Oda believes his core fan base would not be interested.

“I know there are many adult readers nowadays, but if I align myself with their taste too much, I feel ‘One Piece’ would lose its value,” he said.

And Oda’s childlike impishness makes him well-suited to keeping his younger readership in mind. He has turned his house into something of an amusement park, with features like projection mapping, miniature trains and a claw crane.

“You could say he is Luffy himself”, one of Oda’s closest editors once told a Japanese TV programme.

A native of southern Japan’s Kumamoto region, Oda entered Japan’s competitive manga world at 17, when his action-packed maiden work “Wanted!” won a Shonen Jump award.

It was not quite smooth sailing from there though, and it took several flops before “One Piece” was serialised, when Oda was 22.

The work, partly inspired by his childhood fascination with pirate anime “Vicky the Viking”, was all-consuming for Oda.

“I think I was too passionate about manga in my 20s. I was even ready to skip my parents’ funeral if they died while I was on the deadline,” he recalled in an interview five years ago.

Over time, he relaxed into his role but his passion never faded and he relies only minimally on assistants, drawing almost every character and object himself.

“To me, drawing manga is a pastime. I never get stressed about it, so I’m confident I will never suffer karoshi [death from overwork],” he told the 2017 anniversary magazine.

But for all his popularity around the world, Oda has yet to win over some of his own family.

“My daughter is into more girly stuff,” he said in a 2009 conversation with a musician published by Switch magazine, jokingly lamenting the popularity of “Pretty Cure”, an anime franchise featuring evil-fighting schoolgirls.

“Buying ‘Pretty Cure’ goods for her makes me feel defeated.”

PARIS — The earliest known human ancestor walked on two feet as well as climbing through trees around seven million years ago, scientists recently said after studying three limb bones.

When the skull of Sahelanthropus tchadensis was discovered in Chad in 2001, it pushed back the age of the oldest known representative species of humanity by a million years. 

Nicknamed “Toumai”, the nearly complete cranium was thought to indicate that the species walked on two feet because of the position of its vertebral column and other factors.

However, the subject triggered fierce debate among scientists, partly due to the scarcity and quality of the available bones, with some even claiming that Toumai was not a human relative but just an ancient ape.

In a study published in the Nature journal, a team of researchers exhaustively analysed a thigh bone and two forearm bones found at the same site as the Toumai skull.

“The skull tells us that Sahelanthropus is part of the human lineage,” said paleoanthropologist Franck Guy, one of the authors of the study.

The new research on the limb bones demonstrates that walking on two feet was its “preferred mode of getting around, depending on the situation”, he told a press conference. 

But they also sometimes moved through the trees, he added. 

‘Not a magical trait’

The leg and arm bones were found alongside thousands of other fossils in 2001, and the researchers were not able to confirm that they belonged to the same individual as the Toumai skull.

After years of testing and measuring the bones, they identified 23 characteristics which were then compared to fossils from great apes as well as hominins — which are species more closely related to humans than chimpanzees.

They concluded that “these characteristics are much closer to what would be seen in a hominin than any other primate”, the study’s lead author Guillaume Daver told the press conference.

For example, the forearm bones did not show evidence that the Sahelanthropus leaned on the back of its hands, as is done by gorillas and chimpanzees.

The Sahelanthropus lived in an area with a combination of forests, palm groves and tropical savannahs, meaning that being able to both walk and climb through trees would have been an advantage.

There have been previous suggestions that it was the ability to walk on two feet that drove humans to evolve separately from chimpanzees, putting us on the path to where we are today.

However, the researchers emphasised that what made Sahelanthropus human was its ability to adapt to its environment.

“Bipedalism [walking on two legs] is not a magical trait that strictly defines humanity,” palaeontologist Jean-Renaud Boisserie told the press conference.

“It is a characteristic that we find at the present time in all the representatives of humanity.”

Our ‘bushy’ family tree

Paleoanthropologist Antoine Balzeau of France’s National Museum of Natural History said the “extremely substantial” study gives “a more complete image of Toumai and therefore of the first humans”.

It also bolstered the theory that the human family tree is “bushy”, and was not like the “simplistic image of humans who follow one another, with abilities that improve over time”, Balzeau, who was not involved in the research, told AFP.

Daniel Lieberman, a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University, said in a linked paper in Nature that the study’s “authors have squeezed as much information as possible from the fossil data”.

But he added that the research will not offer “full resolution” of the debate.

Milford Wolpoff, a paleoanthropologist at the US University of Michigan cast doubt on whether Toumai is a hominin, telling AFP that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.

The study was carried out by researchers from the PALEVOPRIM palaeontology institute, a collaboration between France’s CNRS research centre and Poitiers University, as well as scientists in Chad.

Guy said the team hopes to continue its research in Chad next year — “security permitting”.

Chadian palaeontologist Clarisse Nekoulnang said the team was “trying to find sites older than that of Toumai”.

Perhaps the most evocative of car segments, the classic front-engine, rear-drive roadster best captures the fun factor inherent to the act of driving and to cars themselves. Stylish and balanced in proportions, the classic roadster configuration and proportion lend themselves to great looks and great handling, while its open top cabin provides a more visceral sense for the peed and sound of the car, and the elements.

A automotive recipe focused on the driver, with its balanced dynamics, design and open and personal two-seat eating, the roadster is the antidote to more practical yet less viscerally immersing cars, regardless of size, segment or capacity for speed. With wildly varying cylinder count, price, power and sophistication levels, the Aston Martin V12 Vantage Roadster, Jaguar F-Type P450 and Mazda MX-5 Roadster represent three of the best such cars.

Aston Martin V12 Vantage Roadster

Aston Martin’s latest exotic convertible, the V12 Vantage Roadster shoehorns the British luxury manufacturer’s vast 12-cylinder engine under the bonnet for spectacular results from the now otherwise familiar model line. Limited to just 249 examples, the V12 Vantage Roadster also adopts a more assertively shapely widebody design to accommodate a wide track suspension, which in turn delivers more sure-footed handling to accommodate the larger, heavier and more powerful engine.

Seductively stylish with its long bonnet, short, pert and tapered rear and now provocatively broad hips, the V12 Vantage Roadster inherits the same engine as its Coupe sister, which is slung far back behind its enormous and hungry grille for a balanced front-mid configuration. Gaining lightweight panels, restyled bumper, more effective aerodynamics and optional lightweight package and rear wing, the V12 Vantage Roadster also features huge fade-resistant carbon-ceramic brakes.

Displacing 5.2-litres, the V12 Vantage Roadster’s twin-turbo 12-cylinder is a howling and relatively high-revving engine. Enormously capable and charismatic in its acoustics and delivery, it produces 690BHP at 6,500rpm and 556lb/ft torque at 5,500rpm. Powering the rear wheels through a 8-speed automatic gearbox and limited-slip differential for enhanced agility and traction, the V12 Vantage Roadster rockets through 0-100km/h in just 3.6-seconds and scythes through the rushing wind until 322km/h.

Specifications

• Engine: 5.2-litre, twin-turbocharged V12-cylinders
• Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel-drive, limited slip differential
• Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 690 (700) [515] @6,500rpm
• Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 556 (753) @5,500rpm
• 0-100km/h: 3.6-seconds
• Top speed: 322km/h
• Length: 4,514mm
• Width: 1,982mm
• Height: 1,274mm
• Wheelbase: 2,705mm
• Weight: 1,855kg
• Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones/multi-link
• Tyres:F/R:275/35R21- 315/30R21

Jaguar F-Type P450 Convertible

First introduced in 2013 as a latter day successor to the iconic 1960s Jaguar E-Type, the F-Type is intended to capture and convey the premium British brand’s sporting heritage and potential. Face-lifted for 2020, the F-Type gained a more aggressive look courtesy of slimmer horizontally-oriented and heavily-browed new headlights. Jaguar’s longest-serving current model, the F-type remains available with the manufacturer’s beguilingly brutal and magnificently bellowing supercharged 5-litre V8 engine.

The most powerful F-Type Convertible variant with a classic roadster rear-wheel-drive configuration, rather than all-wheel-drive, the P450 is a slightly de-tuned version of the manufacturer’s supercharged V8, but nevertheless delivers a mighty 444BHP punch at 6,000rpm and an enormous 428lb/ft kick of torque available throughout a vast 2,500-5,000rpm range. Driven through an 8-speed automatic gearbox the P450 blitzes the 0-100km/h acceleration benchmark in 4.6 seconds and onto a 286km/h maximum.

Expected to be retired upon introduction of a replacement model, the F-Type’s supercharged V8 is a contemporary classic. Muscular throughout its rev range and vociferously vocal, it launches with immediacy from standstill, pulls with effortless ability in mid-range and accumulates power with unabated ferocity at top end. Stable at speed and agile through winding roads, the P450 is, however, best driven with progressive and measured inputs when exiting corners.

Specifications

• Engine: 5-litre, supercharged V8-cylinders
• Gearbox: 8-speed automatic, rear-wheel-drive
• Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 444 (450) [331] @6,000rpm
• Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 428 (580) @2,500-5,000rpm
• 0-100km/h: 4.6-seconds
• Top speed: 285km/h
• Length: 4,470mm
• Width: 1,923mm
• Height: 1,307mm
• Wheelbase: 2,622mm
• Weight: 1,718kg
• Suspension: Double wishbones
• Tyres,F/R:  255/35R20 - 295/30R20

Mazda MX-5 Roadster 2.0L

The car that re-invigorated the classic front-engine, rear-drive roadster as modern, reliable and affordable when introduced in 1989, the Mazda MX-5 remains true to its “just right” recipe in its fourth generation, circa 2016-onwards. Sporting more tech and equipment than previous generations and available with optional automatic gearbox and electric folding hard-top, the MX-5 is, however, best and truest to character with lighter standard manual gearbox and fabric roof.

A more basic fun roadster that is light and powerful enough for brisk performance and great handling without going to a Caterham’s stripped down extreme, the MX-5 is meanwhile comfortable, convenient and well-equipped without being over-wrought or over-complicated, or too heavy, too fast and too expensive. More dramatic than predecessors, the small, slinky and sexy MX-5 now adopts curvier wheel-arches, waistline and bonnet, with perfect proportions oozing tension and athleticism.

Equipped with the more powerful naturally-aspirated 4-cylinder of two engine options, the MX-5 produces 181BHP at a high-strung 7,000rpm and 151lb/ft torque peaking at 4,000rpm. 

Engineered with a rewarding high-rev bias, the lightweight MX-5 carries its 1,025kg mass through 0-100km/h in 6.5-seconds and onto 219km/h. 

Renowned for engagingly balanced and precise rear-drive handling and steering, the nimble MX-5 also features an optional limited-slip differential for added stability, agility and performance.

Specifications

• Engine: 2-litre, naturally-aspirated 4-cylinders
• Gearbox: 6-speed manual, rear-wheel-drive, optional limited slip differential
• Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 181 (184) [135] @7,000rpm
• Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 151 (205) @4,000rpm
• 0-100km/h: 6.5-seconds
• Top speed: 219km/h
• Length: 3,915mm
• Width: 1,735mm
• Height: 1,230mm
• Wheelbase: 2,310mm
• Weight: 1,025kg
• Suspension, F/R: Double wishbones/multi-link
• Tyres: 205/45R17

By Ghadeer Habash
Internationally Certified Career Trainer

The summer is full of events and celebratory occasions and many will wish to capture these memories on their phones and post them too! But before you click away on social media, consider these social media etiquette tips.

•Choose a photo where everyone looks good — not only you! People tend to post the best photo of themselves regardless of how others look. Give others the consideration you would wish for yourself 

•Before clicking away, ask the permission of everyone in the photo before you post on your social media account 

•Crop those who don’t wish their picture to be posted or those who are not in your group

•Get permission to tag them or mention them (many people are not comfortable with being mentioned or tagged for different reasons); respect their privacy

•Never post a photo of someone eating, chewing or swallowing 

•Never post a picture or video of someone looking inappropriate while sitting or leaning

•It’s always nice to give photo credit where it’s due

•It’s courteous to thank those who invited you to the dinner or the event organisers for hosting you

•Avoid sharing political opinions

•It’s not courteous to post negative remarks or negative opinions; for example, “I didn’t find the food great”

•Always check for grammatical and spelling mistakes before posting

•It’s in poor taste to exploit social events with family and friends to promote yourself or your business; if in doubt, ask the hostess or host before you post

•Before you post, take a moment to think through it. How does it represent you and those in the photo or video? Are you proud of the post and feel it is an accurate representation?

Avoiding the use of Snapchat or ‘live’ streaming

Here are some reasons of why you should avoid being obsessed with your phone and with capturing the moment on film: 

•To enjoy the moment, not only to show that your life is better than it might be! 

•Staying on your phone all the time conveys a message of disrespect to everyone sitting at your table

•Snap and Live don’t allow you to edit; if anything or anyone shouldn’t appear at that moment, it’s too late! 

•Not everybody will have been invited to the event you are attending, so this may create hard feelings for others

•By filming your friend’s home live, you are inviting outsiders, whom you may not know yourself, into your friend’s home and privacy

Lastly, try to live the moment and avoid comparing yourself to others. Remember, comparison is the thief of joy.

Reprinted with permission from Family Flavours magazine

ABU DHABI — Oscar beats the summer heat of the United Arab Emirates by working out in a gym, hitting the treadmill twice or three times a week. Nothing unusual in that — except that Oscar is a dog.

As the Gulf's increasingly fierce temperatures become dangerous to health amid fears over the pace of climate change, those who can afford not to work outside in the blazing sun stay inside in air-conditioning.

And for owners of pampered pets able to splash the cash, an air-conditioned gym for dogs has become an attractive option.

"During the winters I used to take him outside, but [in] summers he used to stay isolated," says Oscar's owner Mozalfa Khan, a Pakistani expat.

"Because whenever I take him outside he's sick because of the heat."

The resource-rich Gulf is among the regions most at risk from global warming, with some cities facing the prospect of becoming uninhabitable by the end of the century.

Temperatures often soar above 45ºC  in the UAE, and can remain above 40ºC even after midnight.

The UAE, like other Gulf countries, goes into partial hibernation during its long, hot summers, with those who can afford it staying cloistered in air-conditioned homes and workplaces.

Heat threat to health 

Oscar, a Welsh Corgi, now works out at Posh Pets Boutique and Spa in Abu Dhabi, a shop and grooming salon that offers what's billed as the UAE's first gym for dogs.

Staff carefully secure him with a harness on one of two adapted running machines before he begins to run, with glass barriers on either side to stop him falling off.

Rather than being set to specific speeds, the treadmills automatically adjust themselves to the pace of each dog.

Oscar's owner started bringing him to the gym in the Emirati capital after a vet advised against walking him outside in summer because of the risk of heat stroke.

"Last summer it was really difficult for me because there was no place like this," says Khan.

With the high heat and humidity, "we walk for only two, three minutes and he's done, he doesn't want to walk".

Mansour Al Hammadi, the dog-loving owner of Posh Pets, charges a dirham (25 US cents) a minute for use of the treadmills, or $7.5 for a half-hour run.

Dogs should exercise at least 30 minutes a day, experts say.

"So imagine when you can only walk them one or two minutes a day," Hammadi tells AFP.

"We've closely studied the project to make it 100 per cent safe. Everything was chosen with care and not at random, to avoid any future problems and so as not to harm the dogs," he adds.

Destiny, a seven-month-old German Shepherd, is another regular, bursting into the gym and playing with the other dogs.

"For the dog's health, it's better that she does some exercise and tires herself out," says Destiny's owner Fahed Al Monjed. "Using an indoor running machine is the best solution."

Destiny may indeed take some tiring out. In a recent competition on the treadmills, she set the fastest speed.

TOKYO — Japanese scientists have successfully produced cloned mice using freeze-dried cells in a technique they believe could one day help conserve species and overcome challenges with current biobanking methods.

The United Nations has warned that extinctions are accelerating worldwide and at least a million species could disappear because of human-induced impacts like climate change.

Facilities have sprung up globally to preserve samples from endangered species with the goal of preventing their extinction by future cloning.

These samples are generally cryopreserved using liquid nitrogen or kept at extremely low temperatures, which can be costly and vulnerable to power outages.

They also usually involve sperm and egg cells, which can be difficult or impossible to harvest from old or infertile animals.

Scientists at Japan’s University of Yamanashi wanted to see whether they could solve those problems by freeze-drying somatic cells — any cell that isn’t a sperm or egg cell — and attempting to produce clones.

They experimented with two types of mice cells, and found that, while freeze-drying killed them and caused significant DNA damage, they could still produce cloned blastocysts — a ball of cells that develops into an embryo.

From these, the scientists extracted stem cell lines that they used to create 75 cloned mice.

One of the mice survived a year and nine months, and the team also successfully mated female and male cloned mice with natural-born partners and produced normal pups.

The cloned mice produced fewer offspring than would have been expected from natural-born mice, and one of the stem cell lines developed from male cells produced only female mice clones.

“Improvement should not be difficult,” said Teruhiko Wakayama, a professor at the University of Yamanashi’s Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, who helped lead the study published in the journal Nature Communications this month.

“We believe that in the future we will be able to reduce abnormalities and increase the birth rate by searching for freeze-drying protectant agents and improving drying methods,” he told AFP.

‘Very exciting advance’

There are some other drawbacks — the success rate of cloning mice from cells stored in liquid nitrogen or at ultra-low temperatures is between 2 and 5 per cent, while the freeze-dried method is just 0.02 per cent.

But Wakayama says the technique is still in its early stages, comparing it to the study that produced “Dolly” the famous sheep clone — a single success after more than 200 tries.

“We believe the most important thing is that cloned mice have been produced from freeze-dried somatic cells, and that we have achieved a breakthrough in this field,” he said.

While the method is unlikely to entirely replace cryopreservation, it represents a “very exciting advance for scientists interested in biobanking threatened global biodiversity”, said Simon Clulow, senior research fellow at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Conservation Ecology and Genomics.

“It can be difficult and costly to work up cryopreservation protocols and so alternatives, especially those that are cheaper and robust, are extremely welcome,” added Clulow, who was not involved in the research.

The study stored the freeze-dried cells at minus 30ºC, but the team has previously showed freeze-dried mouse sperm can survive at least a year at room temperature and believes somatic cells would do too.

The technique could eventually “allow genetic resources from around the world to be stored cheaply and safely”, Wakayama said.

The work is an extension of years of research on cloning and freeze-drying techniques by Wakayama and his partners.

One of their recent projects involved freeze-drying mouse sperm that was sent to the International Space Station. Even after six years in space the cells were successfully rehydrated back on Earth and produced healthy mice pups.

PUNE, India — Not many people can boast of having candid conversations about planetary conquest with Elon Musk, but for Indian software engineer Pranay Pathole, a friendly chat with the world’s richest man is just a tweet away.

Their unlikely online friendship has blossomed since Pathole was a teenager, with the mercurial billionaire responding to him over hundreds of tweets and private messages with headline-making company updates and even life advice.

This week, the two finally met face to face, when Pathole travelled to the United States — his first trip overseas — to begin a master’s degree there in business analytics.

“He is super genuine. Like, way down-to-earth. He’s humble,” the 23-year-old told AFP beforehand. “The way he takes his time to respond to me... just shows.”

Musk is a prolific user of Twitter, often posting more than 30 times a day to his 103 million followers.

But it remains a mystery why the SpaceX and Tesla boss, with a net worth of $266 billion, maintains regular contact with the young Indian.

“To be very honest, I have no idea. I think he must be like, really intrigued by my questions,” Pathole told AFP from his parents’ upper-middle-class home in the western city of Pune.

Pathole’s account is one of only a small handful that the billionaire frequently replies to — an average of once every two days, based on Musk’s public Twitter posts since the start of 2020.

The first time Musk responded to him was in 2018 when Pathole, then aged 19, pointed out a flaw in Tesla’s automatic windshield wipers.

“Fixed in next release,” Musk replied, with Tesla addressing the issue in a subsequent software update.

His mother and father celebrated by taking him out to dinner that night.

“I was blown away, to be very honest,” Pathole says. “I took multiple screenshots of it and just never wanted the day to end.”

Their later private chats — daily at first — covered “busting myths” about Musk’s past and discussions about why colonising other planets is “essential”, Pathole says.

“I used to ask him dumb questions, silly questions. And he used to take his time to reply to me.”

The time difference between the US and India has done little to hamper the four-year virtual friendship.

“I don’t think he sleeps that often. Because he’s on Twitter, like, the majority of the time,” Pathole says.

‘He’s an unpredictable guy’

Pathole says interactions with Musk have become “much more casual” over the years, and he no longer rushes to share them with friends and family.

“Elon is the same guy in his public persona as well as in his private,” he says.

Musk’s candid, irreverent and often cryptic tweets have sparked wild stock and cryptocurrency price swings, inviting scrutiny by US regulators.

The billionaire investor is also locked in a high-stakes legal battle with Twitter itself over his effort to walk away from an agreement to buy the company, with the trial set to begin in October.

But Pathole rejects suggestions that the billionaire acts with malice. 

“I don’t think that he’s a troll”, Pathole says. “He’s an unpredictable guy.”

Recruited straight out of engineering college to work at Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest IT firm, Pathole says he was “infamous” for getting into trouble at school — a trait he says helps him better understand Musk.

Having travelled to the US last week — bearing sweets for Musk — he hopes to not only earn his degree at the University of Texas at Dallas but gain work experience at a US company, including any of Musk’s.

“I want to get a job at Tesla on my own merit. It’s not like I want any favours. It would be good if he could interview me,” Pathole says.

After their meeting, Pathole tweeted a picture of the pair, which Musk “liked”.

‘Live on Earth, die on Mars’

Dressed in a black T-shirt in the style of his idol, Pathole can explain the intricacies of reusable rocket boosters and make a philosophical case for space exploration with equal ease.

Often, he quotes the billionaire entrepreneur’s comments verbatim.

“Live on Earth and die on Mars: that is a philosophy that we all share,” Pathole says, adding that he wants to grow old and die with the “red dust of Mars” on his feet.

Pathole has amassed a six-digit Twitter following, adding more every time Musk mentions him in a tweet.

Even offline, Musk is a frequent topic of dinner-table conversation with Pathole’s family and friends.

“Elon is like our family friend,” jokes Pranay’s father Prashant, a media consultant, adding that he and his wife Pallavi, a homemaker, were proud of their son’s passion.

“If he follows Elon Musk, if he wants to settle down on Mars, we don’t mind.”

MIAMI — Enrique Galan is seldom happier than when he disappears deep into the Everglades to hunt down Burmese pythons, an invasive species that has been damaging Florida’s wetland ecosystem for decades.

When not working at his job staging cultural events in Miami, the 34-year-old spends his time tracking down the nocturnal reptiles from Southeast Asia.

He does so as a professional hunter, hired by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) to help control the python population, estimated to be in the tens of thousands. 

At night, Galan drives slowly for kilometres on paved roads and gravel tracks, his flashlight playing on grassy verges and tree roots, and the banks of waterways where alligator eyes occasionally glint.

He charges $13 an hour and an additional fee per python found: $50 if it’s up to 1.2 metres and $25 more for each additional 0.3 metres. 

But on this August night, he has an extra motivation.

The FWC has been holding a 10-day python-hunting contest, with 800 people participating. The prize is $2,500 for whoever finds and kills the most pythons in each of the categories — professional and amateur hunter.

And Galan would love to win that money to celebrate the arrival of Jesus, his newborn baby.

Burmese pythons, originally brought to the United States as pets, have become a threat to the Everglades since humans released them into the wild in the late 1970s. 

The snake has no natural predators, and feeds on other reptiles, birds, and mammals such as raccoons and white-tailed deer. 

“They’re an amazing predator,” says Galan in admiration.

Specimens in the Everglades average between 1.8 and 2.7 metres, but finding them at night in the wetland of more than 607,028 hectares takes skill and patience. 

Galan has a trained eye, as well as the courage and determination needed for the job. After two unsuccessful nights, he spots a shadow on the shoulder of Highway 41: he jumps out of his truck and lunges at the animal, a baby Burmese python.

Grabbing it behind the head to avoid being bitten, he puts it in a cloth bag and ties it with a knot. He will kill it hours later with a BB gun. 

A few miles further on, a huge python slithers across the tarmac. Galan again bolts from his truck but this time the snake escapes into the grass, leaving behind a strong musky scent, a defence mechanism.

Galan took an online training course before hunting pythons, but says he learned everything he knows from Tom Rahill, a 65-year-old who founded the Swamp Apes association 15 years ago to help war veterans deal with traumatic memories through python hunting. 

For a few hours, Rahm Levinson, an Iraq war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, hunts with Rahill and Galan. 

“It really helped me through a lot of stuff struggling at home,” he said.

“I can’t sleep at night and having someone to go out at 12 o’clock, two o’clock in the morning, and catch pythons is something productive and good.”

Galan is proud to participate in a project that has eliminated more than 17,000 pythons since 2000. 

“One of the best things that I get out of it is the amount of beauty that I’m just surrounded by. If you just look closely, open your eyes and observe, you’ll see a lot of magic here.”