‘Gator popsicle’ spotted in frozen pond as frigid weather chills Texas, video shows

A cold-blooded predator recently found itself much chillier than usual — and nearly encased in ice — after frigid temperatures swept through Texas, video shows.

The freezing alligator was spotted at Gator Country Adventure Park in Beaumont, according to a Jan. 18 TikTok video shared by the park. Beaumont is roughly 80 miles northeast of Houston.

“We all know what alligators do in the summer and spring,” Gator Country’s owner Gary Saurage says in the video. “What do they do during the winter and how do they survive? Look at this.”

The alligator can be seen floating motionless in the middle of the murky pond with just its snout poking through the ice, as if the sudden cold snap caught it by surprise and left no time to escape, turning it into a “gator popsicle,” as one commenter put it.

Temperatures dropped below freezing that week, and as low as 17 degrees, in the Beaumont area around the time the video was taken, according to the Weather Channel. While those conditions are more than miserable enough to endanger you or me, alligators have been lounging around the earth for about 65 million years, and it’s going to take more than a cold front to kill them — or even convince them to get out of the water.

“That animal is in full hibernation right there,” Saurage says in the video. “His heart is beating three beats per minute.”

To survive in the freezing cold, alligators enter a state of brumation — a sort of power-saving mode in which their heart rate and metabolism lowers, McClatchy News previously reported. They pick just the right moment to stick their snouts out of the water so they can continue to breathe, a behavior referred to as “snorkeling” by experts.

But even among reptiles, and other crocodilians, the alligator’s survival strategy is unusual, McClatchy reported. While a crocodile generally retreats from the water and lays out on a sun-warmed rock, alligators often double down on being mellow and staying put until their surroundings thaw out.

“Do you think they’re stiff and sore when they wake up?” a commenter asked Gator Country.

“Wish we knew that answer,” the park said.