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America is home to ten states where alligators can be found in the wild, and Massachusetts is firmly not a member of that group. As a result, one man has managed to cause a bit of a stir after filming one he encountered on the banks of the Charles River in the heart of Boston.
There are an estimated 5 million alligators in the United States, but their territory is primarily limited to the southeastern region of the country.
The vast majority of those reptiles reside in the five states that border the Gulf of Mexico (Louisiana leads the pack with approximately two million, while Florida takes the silver with around 1.3 million), but Georgia and South Carolina also boast a sizeable number (Oklahoma, Arkansas, and North Carolina round out the pack with relatively tiny population ranging from 100 to 2,000).
The cold-blooded creatures literally begin to shut down when temperatures dip below 55°F (a survival mechanism known as “brumation”), and they consequently don’t set up shop in regions where the winters could be described as “harsh.”
That word can certainly be applied to the climate in Boston during the coldest months of the year, and the fact that an alligator was recently spotted on the banks of the Charles River has understandably made headlines.
Officials in Boston are hunting for a tiny alligator at the center of a viral video filmed next to the Charles River
The Charles River stretches for approximately 80 miles from a lake in Hopkinton, Massachusetts into Boston Harbor, and it’s home to close to two dozen species of fish that serve as the primary form of wildlife in the waterway.
It is not exactly a hotbed for alligators, but according to CBS News, it’s currently home to at least one of them based on the video a Cambridge resident named Trevor Rochelle captured while walking along the Charles River Esplanade in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston with his girlfriend last weekend.
Why am I minding my business and I see a mini-alligator chilling along the Charles River Bike Path?
📹: @ttrochelle pic.twitter.com/JBage0gCQV
— Only In Boston (@OnlyInBOS) November 10, 2025
Rochelle told the outlet he wasn’t sure the alligator—a juvenile that appears to be less than two feet long—was real before he poked it with a stick and saw it beat a fairly hasty retreat into one of the lagoons on the Esplanade.
He called animal control and said he had a hard time convincing the person he spoke with that he wasn’t making up a story before they dispatched some employees who failed to track it down during a fruitless search on Sunday.
The alligator was spotted shortly before the first cold snap of the season hit Boston, which doesn’t bode well for its survival prospects. It’s unclear how the animal ended up in the Charles—it’s illegal to own one in Massachusetts—although this isn’t an unprecedented incident; a four-foot-long gator was captured in the river in Dedham in 2010.