Understanding the mounting myth that New York’s sewers are full of alligators
There’s a special magic surrounding New York City.
It’s the kind of magic that means you can more or less say any absurd thing happens there, and people will accept it to be the truth, like the long-standing rumour that mutant alligators roam the sewer system under the city.
Admittedly, it sounds like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rip-off, or perhaps a rival gang that the heroes in a half-shall fight at first, before teaming up to take on Shredder and the Foot Clan. Yet, depending on who you ask in the Big Apple, people are either totally convinced that these mutant alligators are real and living mere metres under their feet or they love convincing gullible tourists it’s the case. From my first-hand experience of New Yorkers, I’m pretty sure I know which way around it is.
Nevertheless, the rumours still swirl enough for this story to pick up an incredible amount of lore. They’re albino and blind due to the lack of sunlight. Their toxic diet has seen them grow to the size of taxi cabs. New York’s sewer workers are armed with guns in case they run into them. February 9th is even ‘Alligators in the Sewers Day’ for some particularly keen New Yorkers. It’s part of the city’s tapestry, and astonishingly, there is at least a little bit story that’s true.
For a period of time in the 1930s, baby alligators became a popular pet among kids. However, alligators stopped being cute real quick and a number of them were flushed into the sewers. Meaning that, yes, there was at least one case in 1935 of a group of Harlem teenagers finding an eight-foot-long alligator underneath a manhole cover. It wasn’t the only one, either, with stories of the critters popping up in the East River and the Bronx River.
The irony of this all is that there actually is a city in which the sewers seem colonised by alligators. Wouldn’t you know it, it’s in a state famed for its alligators.
But where in America can you find alligators in the sewers?
To find stories of actual alligators being found in the New York City sewers, you have to go back to 1935 and beyond. To find stories of actual alligators being found in the sewers of Florida, you only have to go back to January 2025. Not only that, but the ten-and-a-half-foot-long beast that got stuck in a Cape Coral storm drain makes the one found in Harlem look like a minnow in comparison.
When you think about it, this makes so much more sense than if this happened in New York City. After all, this is Florida, where its tropical clime makes it a literal and metaphorical hotspot for alligators. It’s part of the culture of the entire state, and day trips out to the swamps to see them in their natural habitat is one of its biggest tourist attractions. I wonder if those boat trips would be any less popular if people knew just how likely they were to see an alligator in the state’s municipal drainpipes. These aren’t rumours either, but the result of a full-on investigation carried out by Alan Ivory, a PhD student at the University of Florida who had his research published by Urban Naturalist.
Over the course of 60 days, Ivory’s team set up 39 cameras in 33 storm drains. Among countless other wildlife sightings, they caught sightings of no less than 50 alligators. Most of them seemed to be travelling, using the infamous Florida storms to get from swamp to swamp. Many of the creatures were hunting, tracking the occasional fish that would find itself in the drains and then cornering it where it couldn’t get away from them. Using man-made architecture to their own advantage.
Clearly, these beasts are smarter than they look. If they mutate the way that sci-fi has told us they will, we ought to be very, very afraid.