Tammy Shaw was paddleboarding around Florida’s Silver Springs State Park when she spotted a very large alligator in the process of killing and eating another smaller alligator and whipped out her phone to film it.
The video shows a murky water shoreline with a big gator’s back barely poking out of the water and when it rose up, it had the smaller gator by the tail and he was chomping on it.
Tammy shared images and video of the gruesome moment to the Alligators of Florida Facebook group and in the video, the gator quickly flips its head and slams the smaller gator’s head on the surface of the water.
Gators throw their prey around like a rag-doll to rip their prey into smaller bite-sized pieces so they can eat them. Tammy told authorities it happened around 3:30pm on Thursday (Aug 4).
“Kind of intense, but super cool to witness,” Tammy said. “My (inflatable) paddleboard is 11 feet and he was close to that (in size) if not longer. The gator he was eating would have been 5 to 7 feet. The video cut short because I felt a little too close for comfort after he slammed it down.”
The Florida Guidebook says that Silver Springs State Park, 85 miles northwest of Orlando, is well known to have gators living there. Tammy often visits the park and says the gators just do their own thing and don’t ever really cause any trouble.
One person wrote in the comments on Tammy’s Facebook post, “That’s the most prehistoric thing I’ve ever seen.”
“If King Kong and Godzilla had a baby, I think it would act something like that,” another posted. “He doesn’t care what it is at that point: Fish, gator or human,” another said.
“This is precisely why I love my little chlorinated body of water. It’s not fancy, but I have no gator MMA happening in there,” a user wrote.