7 Biggest Alligators In The World

The word alligator has been derived from el lagarto, which is an anglicised form, and the Spanish word for ‘the lizard.’ In the early times, Spanish settlers and explorers used to call lizards by this name.

According to the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, there are two types of alligators. One is the American alligator and the other is the Chinese alligator. American alligators grow up to 11.2 feet long and weigh nearly half a ton. 

Chinese alligators are smaller, growing to around 4.6 to 4.9 feet (1.4 to 1.5 m) long and usually weighing only around 50 lbs.

One of the oldest alligator is now 83 years old! He was brought from a zoo in Germany and when he came here, he was already an adult. However, there are no valid records of his actual date of birth, it is believed that he was born in 1937. Named Muja, this alligator is still quite a healthy animal.

7. Brian Jackson Alligator

Length: 12 feet 7 inches
Weight: 690 pounds
Location: Warren County
Discovery Year: 2011

This team of four boys spent an entire night hunting for this giant alligator that had made his home in a 115 acre lake in Warren County. Named Gus, this alligator measured 12 feet and 7 inches long. However, he had a foot missing from his body and it was believed that he lost his foot in a fight with other gators long back.

Hunting on a private lands permit from the Mississippi Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks, the group had to abide by that state’s rules. No baited hooks, like they could use for their two gator tags from Louisiana.

This alligator was the heaviest taken by a hunter since they began holding hunts in 2005.

6. Tom Grant Alligator

Length: 12 feet 9 inches
Weight: 697.5 pounds
Location: Mississippi
Discovery Year: 2012

This massive gator was shot at Millwood Lake and was immediately confirmed as an Arkansas record. Mike Cottingham and three friends fought the alligator for 20 minutes before being able to shoot him in September 2012.

The hunters said that the beast had a belly girth of 65 inches and an even-more-amazing 45-inch tail girth. The boned-out meat from the tail alone filled three 48-quart coolers.

Fellow gator hunter Kenny Winter, who helped lash the gator, said that during all that fighting and running and running out of oxygen, the gator had inhaled a bunch of water. He later blew all of it out right into Winter’s face. It was green, nasty and stinky!

5. Mike Cottingham’s Gator

Length: 13 feet 3 inches
Weight: 1380 pounds
Location: Arkansas
Discovery Year: 2012

A hunter named Mike Cottingham in Arkansas snagged the largest alligator on record in the state – 13 feet, three inches long. He killed the massive beast in Millwood Lake in Hempstead County near the Arkansas-Texas state line on Friday.

He claims the gator is 1,380 pounds – which would make it the heaviest alligator ever caught. The alligator was so large and heavy, it required five people to lift it into his boat. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission says the gator is the biggest caught since opening hunting season in 2007.

Mike plans to mount the giant reptile’s head and made a pair of boots with its hide!

4. Robert Ammerman’s Alligator

Length: 14 feet 3.5 inches
Weight: 654 pounds
Location: Florida
Discovery Year: 2010

This man named Robert Tres Ammerman caught one of the biggest alligators all by himself in 2010. He has been in the alligator hunting business for seven years at the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

But it wasn’t until the last day of 2010’s season that the Pine Hills resident hit the jackpot. What he later learnt was that the gator was the state’s longest documented alligator, breaking a 13-year record.

Measuring 14 feet 3.5 inches long and weighing 654 pounds, the alligator snagged the hefty honor from a relative that measured 14 feet, 5/8-inches (just under 4.3 meters) and was caught in Lake Monroe in 1997 by a nuisance-alligator trapper.

3. Florida Golf Course Alligator

Length: 15 feet (Estimated)
Weight: Unknown
Location: Florida
Discovery Year: 2016

A giant alligator took a stroll across the fairway, making his way to the lake beside the third hole at Buffalo Creek Golf Club, Florida. It was really large, but its size could not be estimated correctly because of the distance. The person who captured a video of the giant alligator said that it was a whopping 15-feet-long!

2. Lee Lightsey & Blake Godwin’s Gator

Length: 15 feet
Weight: 780 pounds
Location: Okeechobee
Discovery Year: 2016

Two Florida hunters captured a massive alligator that measured up to 15 feet long, according to a Facebook post from Outwest Farms in Okeechobee. This huge alligator weighed 780 pounds, according to one of the hunters.

The two hunters first witnessed this alligator in a cattle pond in 2016. Although many believed that the picture had been photoshopped and uploaded, the hunters told a news channel that the picture had not been photoshopped and was directly uploaded on Facebook.

This post on Facebook had been shared over 2,000 times and had almost as many reactions from people all over the world. For over the last 18 years, Outwest Farms has been in the business of hunting huge alligators and a hunt for such a huge gator would cost anywhere around $10,000.

1. The Alabama Alligator

Length: 15 feet 9 inches
Weight: 1,011.5 pounds
Location: Alabama River
Discovery Year: 2014

The biggest alligator in the world measures 15 feet and 9 inches long. The weight of this giant alligator has been recorded at 1,011.5 pounds. He was caught by five members of the Stokes family in the year 2014.

This giant alligator was so huge that it became highly complicated for the family to bring the animal out of the water. A machine was brought to get this gator out of the water and it took as many as five hours to bring him out!

During this process, the gator made things very difficult for the hunting members and at one point, the hunters even tried to shoot the animal, which in turn infuriated the gator even more. However, in the end, one of the hunting members shot this animal and he died on the spot.

However, this huge alligator is now up for view at the Mann Wildlife Learning Museum, Montgomery. The person who shot the gator says that the animal would have been atleast 28 years old.