A python survived cancer, and she's back to feisty

A 15-foot reticulated python at England's Chester Zoo has become the first snake known to receive electrochemotherapy for cancer, and she is now disease-free. Her name is Jodie Foster, after the actress, because her intake paperwork read "JF" for juvenile female. She arrived at the zoo roughly 20 years ago. About two years back she stopped eating and turned lethargic, and keepers found a malignant tumor in her jaw. Surgery removed it. Then another grew. Rather than operate again alone, veterinarians combined surgery with electrical pulses that make cancer cells absorb chemotherapy drugs more easily, a treatment first used in humans in the 1990s. The October 2025 procedure required pushing two operating tables together to hold her 110-pound body. Heated blankets kept her stable through 90 minutes under anesthesia. Her mouth healed fast, and she started eating and gaining weight again. The zoo describes her as back to her "bright and feisty" self.