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28-A photograph of a purported 28-foot alligator first hit the Internet in August 2005, described as a an alligator (of unspecified size) killed in Bay City, Texas. By April 2006 versions of this item had shifted the locale from Texas to Florida and enlarged the 13-foot gator into a 23-foot behemoth, and by April 2013 the giant gator was described as measuring a whopping 28 feet in length: The photograph was real, and the text that originally accompanied it accurately reflected an account of an alligator killed by game wardens near West Columbia, Texas (a town whose primary claim to fame is its status as the First Capital of the fledgling Republic of Texas), in April 2005: The startling picture was taken by Val Horvath, a photographer then working for The Facts, a newspaper in Clute, Texas. The American alligator is commonly found throughout the southern U.S., including the eastern third of Texas, generally in and around fresh-water sources such as swamps, rivers, bayous, and marshes. They typically range in size from 10 to 15 feet in length, so a 13-ft. gator would certainly be a large specimen, but not an extraordinarily-sized one. (A 28-foot American alligator, however, is beyond the realm of credibility, as the largest reported example of that species was only 19.8 feet in length, and even that claim is disputed.) This image is another example of how positioning can exaggerate the apparent size of objects in photographs. The alligator is in the foreground of the picture, with its head turned towards the camera, while a game warden strolls in the background, making the reptile (particularly its head) seem much proportionally larger than it really is.
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