It's not a modern-day Bigfoot: there really are alligators that large.
Following the video of the 13-to-14-foot gator strolling through the Buffalo Creek Golf Course in Palmetto, Florida, many viewers believed the reptile in question had been digitally edited to appear larger. After all, it's not very hard to manipulate videos on the internet, and that is in fact a humongous gator.
A notable skeptic was the popular twitter Photoshop account @PicPedant, which questioned the veracity of the footage in a now-deleted tweet.
But the account handler came to see the light, as the video was shot in 1080p, thus proving this reptile is very much real.
Other viral videos do try to hide telltales behind compression artifacts, so I'd be more suspicious if it were only 360p, not the case here.
— PicPedant (@PicPedant) May 31, 2016
It's uncommon, but not out of the questions to find alligators this size. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission states on their website that the largest alligator recorded in Florida is whopping 14-foot, 3-1/2 inches. A possible successor to that title was hunted down near Okeechobee in April.
So yes, the gator is real, and we do still live in a time where dinosaurs walk the earth.
