Florida man shares sandwich with gator in wild viral video

Screenshot from the viral video posted by @OnlyinFloridaa

​The internet has been reacting to a viral video of a man hand feeding a sandwich to a presumably wild alligator in Florida posted by @onlyinFloridaa on Instagram yesterday.

"Everyone be like 'they’re gonna associate people with food'. Alligators be like 'they are food and some come with appetizers,'" one of the videos top commenters wrote.

The video, captioned with "Florida man is gonna Florida man", has over 24k likes and over 1k comments on Instagram alone, and gives credit to @daddyog1 for the submission. No other details regarding the time or place of the recording are noted in the post.

All jokes aside, many commenters did not find humor in the action.

"Next person in there is gonna wonder why the gators swim right up to them. Settin someone up," another top commenter wrote.

While it appears that no humans or alligators were harmed in the video, that does not mean no harm was done.

According to an article on the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission's website regarding tips for securing attractants, under certain circumstances, feeding certain species of wildlife in Florida is illegal--and alligators make the list.
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"In some cases, feeding wildlife is illegal in Florida. Species with rules related to feeding include bears, coyotes, foxes, raccoons, pelicans, alligators, crocodiles, sandhill cranes, and wild monkeys. Feeding wildlife can reduce their fear of humans which may result in aggression and the need for the animal to be removed or killed in order to protect public safety."

Uncovering Florida has reached out to the Wildlife Commission for comment and will update the article accordingly.

The video is here.