How you feel about alligators probably depends on where you live. But speaking as a northerner who’s spent some time in South Carolina, I found it super unsettling that these gigantic dinosaur-looking things that could easily kill you are just lying around everywhere. As it turns out, they can get crazy big.
Regular gators are big enough as it is.
Most American alligators are somewhere between 10 and 15 feet long. But the largest ever measured was an incredible 19.2 feet long . I wouldn’t want to be the one who measured that gator.
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It’s because of their ancestors.
Ancient alligator ancestors could be disturbingly big. Deinosuchus , a genus that went extinct about 73 million years ago and lived in prehistoric North Carolina, could grow up to 35 feet long.
A Georgia man posted a pic that got people talking.
Seen above is Tauvis La’Ron Travis, who posted about a gator he came across in Cordele, Georgia. Seeing a gator isn’t uncommon in those parts — but when you see the pic, you’ll understand why it blew up.
Yeah. Let say that guy is six feet tall and kneeling right next to the gator. That would make the gator crazy big — like, 20 feet or even more.
Unbelievable, right?
The post saw tons of engagement. Some people even said they lived in gator country and claimed they had no problem believing a full-grown gator could get that big.
Haters are gonna say it’s fake.
Because the internet is a bottomless potpourri of cynical lies, earnest honesty, gullibility and disbelief, it’s understandable that the post garnered a fair amount of critics questioning its validity.
The internet has spoken.
Looking at the original pic, it’s easy to see how forced perspective could play a role in how big the gator looks. It doesn’t require Photoshop — clever angles are all that’s needed.
Forced perspective is pretty fun, really.
We’ve seen it in movies, where it’s used as a practical effect. Tourists might use it to make it look like they’re holding up the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But in this case, there’s a little more to the story.
We need an expert.
Because we’re committed to the truth, we need more than just some random Facebook commenters. Even the original poster, no offense to him, is just some guy on Facebook.
They’re on it!
The local newspaper in Cordele profiled Brent Howze, a biologist who works with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. He pretty much explained everything for the skeptics of Facebook.
It’s actually Brent in the original photo.
He says the gator was found by a local who discovered it in an irrigation ditch. “It took awhile to get it out of that ditch,” he said . “It was bigger than we originally anticipated and we had to use heavy equipment to move it.”
That explains something.
Tauvis La’Ron Travis, the Facebook user who posted the photo, is listed as a heavy equipment operator. It’s plausible that he was called it to help lift the gator, then snapped the pic with the biologist.
So they hauled it out of the ditch…
Perspective does play a role in the image, but not as much as you might think. Howze says he expected the gator to be 10 or 11 feet long, but it was actually 13 feet, 4 inches long and weighed 700 pounds.
Sadly, it was in rough shape.
“It was a very old alligator in poor body condition with what appeared to be gunshot wounds,” Howze said. “It’s an unfortunate situation, but the best thing for the animal was to put it down.”
It’s an interesting viral story.
Some said it was really a giant, others said it was fake. In the end, it wasn’t really either. But it’s fascinating to see what happens when social media gets its eyes on a compelling pic.
