Eight-foot long alligator found alive in Buffalo and other gigantic animal tales
Dan Brawner
June 20, 2007
Recently, when a 50-ton bowhead whale was killed off the coast of Alaska, a three and a half inch harpoon tip was discovered in its neck. Researchers at the New Bedford Whaling Museum dated the projectile at around 1890. They calculated that the wounded fugitive was possibly 130 years old. The gentle giant’s only offense was being big.
In 2004, photos spread across the Internet of “Hogzilla”, the freakishly huge wild bore, shot in Alapaha, Georgia. The big pig was eight feet long and weighed 800 pounds, with 16-inch tusks.
Not long ago, 11-year-old Jamison Stone, shot “Monsterpig” in Lost Creek Plantation in Alabama. This horror-movie hog measured 9 feet, 4 inches and weighed 1,060 pounds. Its head was 54 inches around. The carcass was expected to yield between 500 and 700 pounds of sausage. Stone took down the mythic porker with a 50-caliber pistol, the same caliber shell typically used in shooting down fighter planes. And we Northerners wonder why folks in the South are against gun control. It’s because our pigs are so little.
Humans are fascinated with giant animals. We love giant pandas. Even though we are making them extinct. Recently, the 2 million-year-old remains of the giant panda’s ancestor was discovered in a limestone cave in China. The main difference between them is that the old one was small. University of Iowa anthropologist, Rusell Ciochon, who coordinated the research, is referring to the fossil bear as a “pygmy giant panda”–which sounds like a contradiction in terms–like “jumbo shrimp”.
It seems, the little giant panda lived in an age when being small was something of a disadvantage. Its contemporaries included the playground bullies, “Stegodon” an enormous elephant-like thing with big, stomping feet and “Gigantopithecus”, a 10-foot tall ape that weighed 1,000 pounds. Had the little guy lived 2 million years later, nobody would have bothered him.
This month, authorities confiscated an 8-foot long alligator in the basement of a private home in Buffalo, New York. The large, toothy reptile was taken to a Florida sanctuary where it will be allowed to live a more natural life, frightening a wider selection of people, until the next hurricane knocks down the fence and it can menace unsuspecting golfers. If alligators were two inches long, they wouldn’t be any more appealing than grasshoppers.
You have to feel sorry for the old whale with the 19th Century harpoon in him. But if whales know what’s good for them, they’ll start evolving into cute, little things like gold fish. Every kid will want one for their aquarium and their species will live forever.
In 2004, photos spread across the Internet of “Hogzilla”, the freakishly huge wild bore, shot in Alapaha, Georgia. The big pig was eight feet long and weighed 800 pounds, with 16-inch tusks.
Not long ago, 11-year-old Jamison Stone, shot “Monsterpig” in Lost Creek Plantation in Alabama. This horror-movie hog measured 9 feet, 4 inches and weighed 1,060 pounds. Its head was 54 inches around. The carcass was expected to yield between 500 and 700 pounds of sausage. Stone took down the mythic porker with a 50-caliber pistol, the same caliber shell typically used in shooting down fighter planes. And we Northerners wonder why folks in the South are against gun control. It’s because our pigs are so little.
Humans are fascinated with giant animals. We love giant pandas. Even though we are making them extinct. Recently, the 2 million-year-old remains of the giant panda’s ancestor was discovered in a limestone cave in China. The main difference between them is that the old one was small. University of Iowa anthropologist, Rusell Ciochon, who coordinated the research, is referring to the fossil bear as a “pygmy giant panda”–which sounds like a contradiction in terms–like “jumbo shrimp”.
It seems, the little giant panda lived in an age when being small was something of a disadvantage. Its contemporaries included the playground bullies, “Stegodon” an enormous elephant-like thing with big, stomping feet and “Gigantopithecus”, a 10-foot tall ape that weighed 1,000 pounds. Had the little guy lived 2 million years later, nobody would have bothered him.
This month, authorities confiscated an 8-foot long alligator in the basement of a private home in Buffalo, New York. The large, toothy reptile was taken to a Florida sanctuary where it will be allowed to live a more natural life, frightening a wider selection of people, until the next hurricane knocks down the fence and it can menace unsuspecting golfers. If alligators were two inches long, they wouldn’t be any more appealing than grasshoppers.
You have to feel sorry for the old whale with the 19th Century harpoon in him. But if whales know what’s good for them, they’ll start evolving into cute, little things like gold fish. Every kid will want one for their aquarium and their species will live forever.