It’s more like a dinosaur than a gator
It’s easy to see why there would be questions about the authenticity of a viral photo showing a 13 feet and 4 inches long, 700-pound alligator that was found in a drainage ditch in Georgia.
Gators can’t be that big, right? It has to be a fake or a dinosaur.
“Apparently a lot of people think it’s fake, but I can assure you that it is not,” said Brent Howze, a Georgia Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist who works out of the agency’s regional office in Albany. “I’m the one in the picture, and you can probably tell that I didn’t get too close to it.”
The giant massive reptile also had a chest girth of 57 inches. Basically, this thing could’ve swallowed a few people whole.
Big is an understatement
Authorities received reports about the massive gator after a local discovered it in an irrigation ditch near Lake Blackshear on Monday.
Howze headed up to assess the situation and attempt to move the gator, but he was expecting it to be 10 to 11 feet long at the most.
“It took a while to get it out of that ditch. It was bigger than we originally anticipated and we had to use heavy equipment to move it,” said Howze.
Big doesn’t always mean strong, unfortunately.
Once they were able to get the gator onto level ground it became apparent the animal was in poor condition. They ended up having to euthanize it.
“It was a very old alligator in poor body condition with what appeared to be gunshot wounds,” Howze continued. “It’s an unfortunate situation, but the best thing for the animal was to put it down.”
Swim? With that thing?
Finding a gator of this size doesn’t exactly make everyone want to go jump in the water it came from, but Howze says gators like this one pose little threat to people.
“There’s only one way for an alligator to live this long, and it’s by avoiding humans,” Howze said. “I’ll be in the water at Lake Blackshear this summer for sure.”
That may be true, but we don’t want to be the guy that ends up getting pulled under the water after diving in.
