Floridians are no strangers to alligators, but it seems as if Australia might have some aggressive crocodiles that could rival the best gator in the Sunshine State.
The Guardian reports that a 19-year-old man, who was camping in the country's Northern Territory with his family, was asleep at 4:30 a.m. on Monday when a crocodile bit his leg and began to drag him out of his tent.
"I was down at Dorisvale, and at about 4:30 this morning, I was sleeping in a mozzie net, and ... I woke up and there was something shaking my foot," Peter Roswellb told ABC. "I woke up and had a look and it was 3 to 4 meters long." Roswell said he hit the croc "one or two times" and it let him go, which is when he was rushed to the hospital with puncture wounds and bruising.
Crocodile specialist and Charles Darwin University Senior Research Associate Adam Britton told ABC that the issue was that Roswell was sleeping too close to the water.
"Crocodiles are inherently curious animals. They really quite like to check things out," he said. "Sometimes that means they're hungry and they want to check out what the food is, and sometimes they just want to have a stickybeak. Unfortunately, that means you're potentially going to get bitten."
In Florida, gators have recently been popping up in the ocean, with one pulled from a Fort Myers beach April 15 and another pulled from an Amelia Island beach Sunday. While it wasn't at a campsite, a 15-foot-long gator was captured and killed after it terrorized the livestock on a Florida ranch April 6.