Python farming and the future of fashion

Unfortunately for pythons, their skin is the height of fashion at the moment.

Python skin handbags can sell for more than 4000 dollars a piece. And it didn't help when Beyonce performed at the super bowl last year wearing a python skin outfit.

Researchers say the growing demand for python skin handbags and other fashion items in Europe is fuelling imports.

But the trade is so poorly regulated that it's extremely difficult to establish the true source of the skins.

Now The Python Conservation Partnership - a collaboration between Kering - which owns the Gucci brand - as well as the International Trade Centre and the IUCN, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature - thinks its hit upon a solution to the black market trade.

It wants to establish python farms - where the snakes are bread in captivity exclusively for the skin trade. Jean Christophe Vie is deputy director of the IUCN: