Terrifying video captured the moment an alligator dragged a huge python through the water in the Florida Everglades.
Kelly Alvarez, an Everglades National Park guide, was able to film the alligator, nicknamed “Godzilla,” as it held a huge dead Burmese python in its jaws and swam with it along the surface of the murky water on Thanksgiving Day.
“I’ve seen a lot of alligators eating pythons here,” Alvarez said USA today. “I’ve never seen a python that big.”
Normally, Alvarez gave her usual tour of the Everglades National Park – the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States – on the seemingly normal holiday morning.
As the group took in the breathtaking water views from the Shark Valley observation tower — the highest point a visitor can reach on foot in the entire park — a scream from one of the children stopped Alvarez.
“I thought it was a log floating on the surface of the water or something,” Alvarez said. “Then I saw the alligator moving him.”
She looked around at the surrounding waters and recognized the reptile informally known as Godzilla — an estimated 10- to 12-foot-long alligator that regularly sunbathes near the tower.
But to her disbelief, Godzilla had an unexpected meal in his mouth: a giant python that looked almost twice as long as the alligator.
The moment an alligator was spotted dragging a dead, giant Burmese python into its jaw as it soared over the waters of the Florida Everglades was captured on terrifying video footage
Kelly Alvarez, an Everglades National Park guide, was giving her usual Thanksgiving tour from the Shark Valley observation tower — the highest point a visitor can reach on foot in the entire park — when a scream from one of the children alerted her to the shocking sight
Burmese pythons are typically found over a thousand square miles of South Florida, including Everglades National Park – the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States
Alvarez then began filming from her position in the tower as the alligator slithered through the surface of the water — dragging an inflated snake with its ends missing and dragging it along with it.
“It’s huge,” someone could be heard saying in the video. “That’s a very, very big python.”
“That’s so gross!” Alvarez added.
Another guide intervened and said, “You know it’s something serious when it’s something we haven’t seen before.”
Burmese pythons are considered one of the largest snakes in the world: according to the University of Florida, they average between 3 and 5 meters in length as adults.
In July 2023, a group of python hunters captured the longest python ever recorded in the waters of the Big Cypress National Preserve in eastern Collier County. The Palm Beach Post reports this.
It was no less than 6 meters long.
A year earlier, biologists from the Conservancy of Southwest Florida captured a 21-foot-long, 215-pound female python, making their catch the heaviest ever.
Alvarez thought it was a floating log at first glance, but then she realized it was a python that looked almost twice as long as the alligator, which she said was at least 10 feet long.
As an invasive species, pythons pose a threat to native wildlife and wreak havoc on Florida’s ecosystem because they eat almost everything in their path and have very few predators.
In July 2023, a group of python hunters captured the longest python ever recorded in the waters of Big Cypress National Preserve – measuring a whopping 20 feet in length.
But the shocking Thanksgiving find might just take the cake for the longest python ever seen, considering it looked colossal next to the already gigantic alligator.
Godzilla, estimated to be at least 10 feet long, was captured holding the snake in his jaw, halfway down his swollen body, keeping him afloat on either side.
Alvarez estimated that the python must have been at least 20 feet long, which would ultimately make it one of the largest snakes ever found in the Everglades, USA Today reported.
She later explained that the reason for the python’s bloat may have to do with the way alligators handle their prey.
Gators typically hold onto large prey for a few weeks while it decays so that it can disintegrate more easily and efficiently.
And because the snake runs out of oxygen and begins to decompose, its body emits gases such as methane and hydrogen sulfide, causing its abdomen to swell.
Burmese pythons are typically found in more than a thousand square miles of South Florida, including Everglades National Park, Big Cypress National Preserve and Collier-Seminole State Park, The Palm Beach Post reported.
But as an invasive species, they pose a threat to native wildlife and wreak havoc on Florida’s ecosystem.
The species is shedding prey populations because they have very few predators — instead, they prey on the native species that live in the Everglades.
Burmese pythons will eat virtually anything in their path, feasting on everything from field mice to deer.
A 2012 study found that they have contributed to the decline of several animals, including raccoons, opossums, bobcats, foxes, and swamp and cottontail rabbits.