Alligators-in-the-Sewers Update

Alert: The Alligators-in-the-sewers MonsterQuest episode is being repeated on
Sunday Aug. 22, 2010 at 8:00 AM HISTORY
MonsterQuest Gators in the Sewer #3.13 on History.

Needless to say, I’ve had much to say about the gators down through the years. See Mysterious America for my chapter on the stories and sightings behind the simple phrase, “alligators in the sewers.” Or watch MonsterQuest.

What if one of the most famous and terrifying urban legends was not a legend but a frightening fact? History tells us that Alligators lurking around in the sewers of New York City is based in truth. In the mid 1930s three teenagers pulled an eight-foot alligator from a storm drain. Reports persisted until a skeptical Superintendant of Sewers, Teddy May, was forced to investigate for himself. What May found shocked even him – swarms of alligators alive beneath the busy main street of America’s biggest city. Crews were sent in to kill the deadly reptiles, but the stories of the gators in the sewers lived on. Experts, however, are divided over whether it is scientifically possible for alligators to continue to exist in the sewers, so a MonsterQuest team sets out to search for modern evidence of these monsters and prove that they could not only survive but also thrive. Herpetologists and underground explorers join forces and use the latest in remote-operated camera technology to delve into the depths of New York’s sewers.
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What did you think of it? Did it expand your understandings and survivability of crocodilians in the sewers?

In the comments that follow, some early objections to the notion of sewer gators not being able to live have been answered in the program and by other comment makers.

Here too is an entertaining “created” video that summarizes the “alligator sewer” story:

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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