Friday 9 August 2013

Rambling American Crocodile Caught 350 Miles from Home

An 11-foot-long (3.3 meters) American crocodile has made an epic journey around the tip of Florida. Born just south of Miami in 1999, it traveled at least 350 miles (563 kilometers) through the southern part of the state before it was captured recently outside of Tampa.
Credit: Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

Last month, the crocodile was caught in Lake Tarpon and a tag on its tail revealed just how far it had ventured.

Wildlife officials had marked the roving reptile soon after it was born in the waterways around the Turkey Point power plant, a site at the southeast tip of Florida near the city of Homestead, said Gary Morse, a spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC). 

By 2008 the croc had traveled more than 100 miles (160 km) from its hometown. That year, authorities found the animal on a golf course in Naples, a city on the southwest coast of the state, and had to remove it.

"Subsequently, it decided to take a long journey," Morse told LiveScience.

The animal worked its way up the west coast of Florida, into Tampa Bay, through Pinellas County and ended up in Lake Tarpon.

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