A massive gator patrolling a Florida golf course has gone viral. He joins the ranks of other gigantic animals that have made the Pop Mech hall of fame. Here’s the scary part: Gators can get even bigger than this guy.
An American alligator that took a stroll through Valencia Golf and Club in Naples, Florida has captivated the internet for one obvious reason: He’s [email protected]*#-ing huge.
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đ You love badass beasts. So do we. Let’s nerd out over them together.
Naturally, we had some questions when we first laid eyes on this thing, so we fired ’em off to gator guru James Nifong, a zoologist and data management analyst at the University of Florida-Fort Lauderdale Research and Education Center.
To our disappointment, Nifong confirms the creature is not, in fact, a dinosaur. But to our surprise and mild horror, he says this isn’t even the biggest gator he’s ever seen.
“They can grow even larger,” Nifong tells Popular Mechanics. “The record length for alligators is just shy of 15 feetâmuch larger than the alligator in the photo.”
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Nifong doesn’t quite know the exact size of the viral gator, but reveals that gators actually never stop growing; the bigger they are, the older they are. âCrocodilians (including alligators) display indeterminate growth and keep growing throughout their entire life,” he says. “So, for an alligator to reach that size it must have lived for a long time.”
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