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Monster Alligator Looks Like Something From 'Jurassic Park'

Monster Alligator Looks Like Something From 'Jurassic Park'
Giant gator on a Florida golf course.
Charles Helms
Giant gator on a Florida golf course.

You can practically hear the "Jurassic Park" theme as you watch this footage of a giant alligator lumbering across the Buffalo Creek Golf Course in Palmetto, Florida.

The gator was so big that many believed the video was created with computer animation -- and even the guy who recorded it and posted the clip online last week had his doubts.

"I didn't know if we were being punked or something," golfer Charles Helms told ABC affiliate WFTS in Tampa.

The alligator, estimated to be about 15 feet long, looked so much like something from a "Jurassic Park" film that someone added the footage to a scene from the first movie:

Helms told Golf.com that the creature could only move about 100 feet at a time before stopping to rest. He also said gators on golf courses generally leave people alone.

"It is very common to see alligators on a Florida golf course and they're typically not a threat to golfers," Helms told the website. "Wild alligators are shy and will not bother you unless you provoke it or corner it so it feels threatened."

The gator has become something of a mascot for the course.

"People have heard that he is out here and that is all they want to see so they will bring spectators to ride so somebody can get a picture," Wendy Schofield, a clerk at the pro shop, told NBC station News 3 in Las Vegas. "He doesn't bother anybody and they don't bother him."

The gator even has its own page on Snopes, the myth-busting website, which confirmed that the footage was indeed real.

(h/t Vice)