An image has been circulating showing a giant alligator hanging from a crane, as a person in uniform walks behind it. But according to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (as quoted in the
Texarkana Gazette), the image is fake:
"It's fake. It didn't happen. We don't just go out and kill alligators just because they are there. I don't know why anyone would perpetuate something like that," he said. "There is a lot that comes across the Internet that is fabricated," said Arkansas Game and Fish Commission Lt. Don Albright...
According to the photograph's accompanying text, Evening Shade, Ark., residents Charles and Anita Rogers, who may or may not exist, said they could hear "bellowing" during the evening hours. According to the story, their neighbors attributed the alleged noise to a giant alligator they saw in the pond that runs behind their home.
"I didn't believe it," Charles Rogers said in the story.
Albright said the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission has detained large alligators in the past like the one seen in the picture. However, he said the organization has a policy to protect the alligators rather than shooting them, hanging their remains from a suspended crane and taking pictures of their trophy.
But how exactly is it fake? That's not clear to me. Is it the caption that's fake? Or has the image been photoshopped?
Snopes suspects the image is genuine, but has the incident occurring in Texas.
An image has been circulating showing a giant alligator hanging from a crane, as a person in uniform walks behind it. But according to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (as quoted in the Texarkana Gazette), the image is fake:
Comments
I'm also with Sir Stephen: I had some gator meat recently, and it was very tasty.
I enjoyed reading them.
People might just move 'gators in Arkansas, but I know they also get killed when they've become a menace. If it's too big to just trap, they might tranqualize it first, and then get a bunch of people to help lift it. If a 'gator eats something living, other than it's natural prey found in the wild, they might get killed. If it's become so conditioned to humans that it doesn't run away when one approaches, they might kill it. It's just too dangerous to move them into the wild - where a person would expect for a 'gator to run away from them. Every now and again they get put into a Gator Farm.
Sorry, I'm not up on my reptile physiology, but I would expect the head to hang down.
Scary part is that they are a "protected species" and almost every neighborhood pond it Florida has them. The state will not remove them until they become a "threat." (i.e. Eat somebody's dog or kid!)
The sun is quite clearly shining on this part brightly but the animal has no shadow?
The back of the animal is curved, suggesting that the picture is taken of the gator laying, if it was strung up, the back would be straight down.
The whole left side of the gator is also too "clean cut" especially the leg, no diffusion of light that you would expect.
But hey! What would I know, I'm a registered blind person after all.
Who knows why it is dead??? one can only assume... maybe old age... harhar! why is the tail bent up and the head out straight, rigamortis (spp?) if the gator was in a 8 foot truck bed with the gate closed and is 11 feet long his tail would be bent about that much... and rigor will keep the body straight for a little while in the possition is rigored in... I don't know how long that is for gators..?
I love hoaxes... I've seen alot of them...
Ben
Wildlife Technician
There are several details (the color of the reflected light on the gator's skin, the placement of the shadows and softness of the blooming of the light due to the lens) that would suggest that the photo is genuine. Unfortunately, there also some elements of the photo that look out of place. Primarily, the contrasty appearance of the alligator's skin and his "posture". The posture was explained quite satisfactorily by Ben Tabor a few posts ago. That leaves the contrasty skin. Since that would be an extraordinarily easy thing to "fix" for anyone with the skill to fake the convincing details I listed above... It is my opinion that this photo is real and untouched and that the size of the gator is impressive, but exaggerated by forced perspective.
A forced perspective theory would also explain the lack of a shadow for the gator. Actually, now that I study the photo a little more, I am noticing that the bucket on the backhoe seems enormously large. It looks to be nearly the size of the operator's cage. This is definitely a case of forced perspective.
There you have it.
I found this same photo on another site and it was smaller there. In that one, you could more easily tell that the gator is much closer to the camera than anything else in the photo. That's why he's so much "sharper". When the image is smaller, you can sort of tell that everything in the background (everything except the gator) is sort of out of focus.
The photographer was trying to get a good shot of the gator and probably didn't even intend to shoot the officer.
The largest gator that has been killed one block from my house there was 11.5 ft. long. The killer almost got in trouble, even tho the gator came out of the lake behind his house, chasing him and his dog, because it was not "gator season" yet. My husband was driving to work one day and saw the game warden and employees roping one that was 6 ft long. My neighbor had one on her front porch that was 3 ft. long.
If the gator is small enough it is taken to Brazos Bend Park. If it is too large it is shot and killed. This one was too large to move to a park and keep alive. I don't know what they did with the carcass. There was also one that was shot and killed in Katy Texas about a year ago, that is NW Houston.
You can go to Brazos Bend Park in Texas, in Brazoria County, and see MANY huge gators. They are allowed to roam loose, and you can walk right past them. We have done that for years, and no one has been attacked. They must keep them well fed and lazy. Do not let your dog run loose there without a short leash though. I still have the local newspaper with this gator photo on the front page. I will find out what date it was. But it is very real.
A friend of ours, Dick Robie, was out by a levee in Lake Jackson Texs and his dog was out in the water, and a gator came up and grabbed the dog. The dog did not survive. This levee is right behind McClean park and the little league fields and the recreation center, and the middle school is across the street from this area. No fences.
I still have that photo of that huge gator saved on my computer from when it was in the paper.
BRAZOS BEND STATE PARK full of huge alligators.
They come up out of this lake, too. It is a block from my house. The biggest one I know of to date is 11.5 ft. long. It was shot and killed by David Melass.
"The work of the underwater archeology crews (which came to be known as the TAS Navy) attracted attention as well. Braving muck and a tangle of aquatic plants, Brenda Whorton and assistants surveyed the bottom of the oxbow lake to determine if it could have been smaller during the nineteenth century and used a magnetometer to look for anomalies. Their efforts paid off: they discovered the original road (now underwater) leading from the sugar mill to the other side of the lake where the slave quarters and other buildings were located.
Although the divers had been assured that there were no alligators present, the critters apparently returned soon after the TAS field school cleared out. The very day after field school ended, Joan Few learned that a 5-foot alligator was spotted in the lake!" I would call that one a baby.
I am flying to our house in Lake Jackson Texas on Sat. I will find that newspaper and put the date of it here when I get it. I have also emailed the Brazosport Facts and asked them for the date of the photo. It isn't the only big gator caught in Texas, only one of many.
Giant Alligator
Claim: Photograph shows a 13-foot alligator killed in Texas.
Status: True.
Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2005]
http://www.thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=86dd3c1ea51fe00d
This is a real photo of a gator killed in Bay City, TX.
Lot of South Texas Nuc Plant folk live in this area. Look at the size of that head!
Here is another reason to stay out of the ditches and bayous.
This was found at Bar X, which is between Angleton and West Columbia, near a house. How would you like to meet this fella in the dark? Never let it be said that we don't grown them big in Texas.
April 2005:
Game wardens forced to shoot alligator
Published April 16, 2005
WEST COLUMBIA - Anita and Charlie Rogers could hear the bellowing in the night.
Her neighbors in Bar X Ranch had been telling them they had seen a giant alligator in the bayou that runs behind their house, but they dismissed the stories as exaggerations.
"I didn't believe it," Charles Rogers said. Friday they realized the stories were, if anything, understated. Texas Parks and Wildlife game wardens had to shoot the beast.
(Caption: Joe Goff, a game warden with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, walks past a 13-foot, 1-inch alligator that he shot and killed in the back yard of the home at the Bar X Ranch on FM 521 near West Columbia.)
The startling picture was taken by Val Horvath, a photographer then working for The Facts, a newspaper in Clute, Texas.
The American alligator is commonly found throughout the southern U.S., including the eastern third of Texas, generally in and around fresh-water sources such as swamps, rivers, bayous, and marshes. They typically range in size from 6 to 14 feet in length, so a 13-ft. gator would certainly be a large specimen, but not an extraordinarily-sized one.
This image is another example of how positioning can exaggerate the apparent size of objects in photographs. The alligator is in the foreground of the picture, with its head turned towards the camera, while a game warden strolls in the background, making the reptile (particularly its head) seem proportionally larger than it really is.
It is true. THE FACTS our local newspaper
April 16, 2005 Still available online the front page from that date - I still have the hard copy at home.... my son insisted that we keep it.
http://www.thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=86dd3c1ea51fe00d
You can contact the paper and ask them about it at
http://thefacts.com/letter.lasso
I don't know how big gators can get but the biggest one in my neighborhood was 11.5 ft long. That I know of.
They don't put "staged" photos on the front page. This one was very real. If they can catch them and take them to a wildlife park they do. If not, they must shoot them and haul them off. Which is sad and upsets all the local kids who see it. But not as sad as if the gator ate some of the kids. We also have a home in So. Calif. where we have a problem with mountain lions, coyotes, and bears coming into town and eating small pets. And even some large ones. It is just nature.
http://www.bigeasy.com/features/alligator.html
How big can an alligator grow?
Alligators can live to 60 or 70 years-old. Full grown females can reach 8 1/2 feet long. Males can reach 14 feet and the longest recorded gator was 19 feet long.
"You can estimate a submerged alligator's size easily," Lazare says, "The length of nostrils to eyes in inches is about the length of the body in feet."
I went on this swamp tour a couple of years ago, just outside New Orleans and it was quite interesting. We got to walk on the boggy swamp land, and we got to hold a baby gator.
Did gators crawl out of Jurassic Park?
Almost. Alligators have existed since early in the Jurassic period (140-190 million years ago), but they are reptiles, which means they are cold blooded. They cannot regulate their own body temperature and have very low metabolism rates, says Lazare. In winter, their metabolism slows down further and in temperatures below 78 degrees they cannot digest food. Instead it will actually rot in their stomachs. Not that this keeps alligators from hunting. But in winter they will slow down and sleep for several days at a time in partially submerged dens they build at a bayou's edge or riverbank.
Of course, that might be a bit presumptuous of me.. it's entirely possible that some are just too lazy to read the previous posts and honestly believe that they're contributing something new. If that's the case, then I apologize to them for mistaking their incompetence for dishonesty.
Gator done
Joe Goff, a game warden with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, walks past a 13-foot, 1-inch alligator that he shot and killed in the back yard of a home in the Bar X Ranch on FM 521 near West Columbia.
Published April 16, 2005
Photo by Val Horvath
Since then there has been another one in my little hometown - we are moving back there next week!
Now there is another gator story there...
Gator raises stir in Jones Creek
By John Lowman
The Facts
Published May 15, 2007
JONES CREEK
You can still look it up at http://www.thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=86dd3c1ea51fe00d
Front page of our local paper in 2005.
Re: Brazos Bend State Park
One of the best spots in Texas to photograph the alligators is probably the 2000 hectares Brazos Bend State Park, managed by Texas Parks & Wildlife. It is the best example of prime inland habitat in Texas and one of the best examples in the entire United States as well. It is very different from other coastal and inland sites in that a large number of alligators exist in a single locality where several bodies of water are in close proximity to each other and are interspersed by trails. This is significant in terms of viewing alligators without disturbing them with a noisy airboat engine.
(Someone has too much time on his hands!)
There are TWO 13-foot gators pictured.
Live gator is from 2004 :
http://www.fws.gov/southeast/news/2004/r04-073.html
Dead gator is from 2005:
http://www.thefacts.com/story.lasso?ewcd=86dd3c1ea51fe00d
http://www.snopes.com says TRUE.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/wcgator.asp
This is THEIR home, too. They were here FIRST. Like it or not. Just as there are coyotes in San Marino Calif. Just as there are grizzlies in Alaska. There are wolves and foxes around, too. Wild animals DO exist, like it or not. They are common at 12-14 ft. long. There have been several killed IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD. Timbercreek area of Lake Jackson Texas. The biggest one was 11 ft long right down the street. They are common here. We killed a copperhead snake in our yard in April. We killed a Prairie rattlesnake in June - NOT usually in this area. And we tried to kill a coral snake here in our yard in July, but it got away. They are very deadly, as poisonous as a cobra.
That is what it is like, in a swamp.