Man vs beast: Giant alligator caught; but 'Michael Jackson' eats man in front of wife

Hunters in Alabama snared an alligator weighing nearly half a tonne, the largest ever caught in a legal hunt in the state, conservation officials say.

The alligator, caught with a snare hook in a southern Alabama state park , was so heavy it required a backhoe to hoist it onto a scale, said Mike Sievering, a state wildlife biologist who supervised the hunt.

AP

"He was an eyeful, I'll say that," Sievering said.

The alligator, which weighed 453kg and measured 4.5m long, was nearly 50kg heavier than the previous state record holder, he said.

Alabama began allowing alligator hunts in 2011, responding in part to the reptiles showing up unbidden in fish farm ponds, Sievering said.

In Sievering's three-county area, up to 50 alligators are legally hunted over two weekends each summer by hook and line and underwater bow and arrow.

AP

The American alligator was listed as endangered by the United States in 1967 after its ranks were diminished by habitat loss and excessive hunting.

But the species was removed from the list 20 years later and now numbers more than a million in the southeastern United States, according to the National Parks Conservation Association.

57-year-old fisherman killed by crocodile in front of his wife

Pic: YouTube

A 57-year-old fisherman has been killed by a 4.5 meter (15-foot) crocodile in front of his wife while the couple fished in a northern Australian river notorious for the deadly predators, police said on Monday.

The white-headed crocodile nicknamed Michael Jackson has been shot dead, reports said Tuesday.

The man, whose name has not been released, entered the Adelaide River  on Monday afternoon to unsnag his line when he was taken by the saltwater crocodile, Northern Territory Police Duty Superintendent Jo Foley said.

The woman did not see her husband taken, but heard "a scream and then turned around and saw a tail splashing in the water," Foley said.

The Adelaide River crocodiles are a major tourist attraction. The man was attacked near the Arnhem Highway bridge close to where cruise ships show sightseers crocodiles leap from the water to snatch chicken carcasses suspended from poles.

Police Senior Constable Travis Edwards said searchers in boats found the victim's body on Monday night and shot the crocodile.

Police Superintendent Bob Harrison told Australian Broadcasting Corp. that the killer crocodile had regularly leapt for chickens dangled from the cruise ships and was well known to operators of the Spectacular Jumping Crocodile Cruise.

The fatality is the first in Australia since June, when a 4.7-meter (15-foot, 5-inch) crocodile snatched a 62-year-old fisherman from his dinghy on the South Alligator River in the Northern Territory.

Crocodile numbers have swelled across Australia's tropical north since the species was protected by federal law in 1971. The crocodile population is densest in the Northern Territory.

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