Fact check: Video shows animatronic puppet, not live crocodile

Kate S. Petersen, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Video shows giant, live crocodile in Maine lake

Some social media users are sharing a video they claim shows an enormous crocodile in an unusual place: Maine.

The video shows what appears to be large crocodile floating at the surface of a body of water. Its head and tail appear to move at times and divers are shown approaching the animal. At the end of the video, a clip shows what appears to be a rope attached to the crocodile's head.

The logo for the Stan Winston School of Character Arts is shown in the bottom left corner.

"Yes, this is a 29 foot crocodile just floating around in a lake, IN MAINE," reads part of the video's caption in a Nov. 20 Facebook post. "This is believed to now be the worlds largest croc."

The video was viewed nearly 5,000 times in a week.

But the caption is wrong. The video shows a 30-foot animatronic crocidile created for a movie, not a living animal.

USA TODAY reached out to the Facebook user who shared the post for comment.

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Crocodile is animatronic puppet from 'Lake Placid' movie

The crocodile shown in the video is an animatronic puppet that was created by Stan Winston Studio for the movie "Lake Placid", according to Balázs Földesi, the social media director at the Stan Winston School of Character Arts.

Lake Placid was a 1999 movie about a giant crocodile terrorizing residents of Maine, according to IMDb.

The video being shared online is composed of archival footage that Földesi cut together, he said in a direct message. The video was posted to the Stan Winston School of Character Arts's Facebook page in July. The video's caption explains the crocodile is an animatronic puppet created for the movie. It also states the footage was filmed in Castaic Lake in Los Angeles, CA, not a lake in Maine.

A 2018 article on the school's webpage describes the making of the giant crocodile by Stan Winston Studio.

Stan Winston, the head of Stan Winston Studio, created other memorable movie characters and props for films such as "Terminator 2: Judgement Day" and "Jurassic Park," according to IMDB.

Winston died in 2008 and the Stan Winston School of Character Arts was founded by Winston's surviving family members, according to Földesi.

The video was also debunked by Associated Press.

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Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that a video shows a giant, live crocodile in a Maine lake. The video shows an animatronic puppet that was created for the movie ''Lake Placid.''

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Video shows large animatronic puppet, not live crocodile