"Hitler's Alligator" Topic

An alligator once rumored to have belonged to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler has died at the Moscow Zoo. Saturn, a Mississippi alligator, was about 84 years old when he died of old age on Friday, the zoo said in a statement…

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That is quite an age – how old do the alligators live in nature? If it actually ever met Hitler, it would have been at most 9 years old at the time.

The species typically lives for 30 to 50 years in the wild, according to the zoo.

He could be a good addition to a pulpish game. Did Martin Bormann disappear by being eaten? Was he haunting the Berlin sewers during the three years he was missing? Since he was found by the British, presumably in the British sector of Berlin, did he develop a taste for Brits? Or was he perhaps an early escapee from the Russian zone? Was he scheduled for a berth on the next U-boat to the secret Nazi base in Antarctica? Was he used to teach Nazis how to avoid being eaten by dinosaurs prior to shipping them back to the Jurassic era?

So many questions to answer in our games!

Grelber

65 – 80 or so, in captivity, apparently.

A couple of questions arise:
1. What did it eat for 3 years?
2. How did the British capture it? Did it come out for food?

1. or WHO
2 It decided life would be better in the West.

That was one big gator, So He eat whatever he wanted.

I can just imagine some poor fellow trying to escape the Russian zone through the sewers. Seemed like a GREAT idea at the time!

Made the national news. Anything Hitler will do that.

Just to get all the minutiae straight: there is no such thing as a "Mississippi Alligator". The animal in this story is an American Alligator, the scientific name for which is Alligator mississippiensis.

The life expectation of the American Alligator in the wild was thought to be 30-50 years until recently; now there is a new theory that they last 20-35 years. Captive alligators can live much longer; along with Saturn, there was (maybe still is. for all I know) an alligator named Mujah in the Belgrade zoo that was sent there from the Berlin Zoo as a full-grown adult in 1937 and was still alive in 2018.

As far as eating goes, alligators can survive for long periods without food as long as they can get sunlight. In a bombed-out city, a gator could easily find a place to bask and the usual fauna (dogs, cats, rats) along with carrion of people, horses, etc would be enough. Man-eating alligators are for the most part native to Hollywood.

Also, in a climate cooler than the South, an alligator might sleep more. No evidence for this specific gator but it fits in with their behaviour.

Here endeth the lesson.

LT

All those jokes in king of the hill about hitler's canoe seem so much more believable after seeing this.