It’s not Photoshop – the gator really is this big

Photos of an enormous alligator captured in America prompted claims of Photoshop trickery until the authorities intervened to remind folk that, frighteningly, our crocodilian friends really can get that big.

The alligator weighed about 317kg and measured just over four metres from snout to tail-tip.

The beast was picked up in Georgia's Lake Blackshear.

It had been shot and unfortunately - or fortunately, depending on how close you lived to it - had to be euthanised.

"Apparently a lot of people think it's fake, but I can assure you that it is not," biologist Brett Howze told the Cordele Dispatch.

"I'm the one in the picture, and you can probably tell that I didn't get too close to it."

We hate to break it to our American friends, but the gator's supposedly gigantic length of four metres is pretty standard for an adult male saltwater crocodile in northern Australia.

Be careful swimming up there in the wet season, people.