Talk:The Caribbean Mystery

A fact from The Caribbean Mystery appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 21 October 2020 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that the swamp scenes in The Caribbean Mystery feature a 350 lb (160 kg) alligator named Ben, who was appearing in his 435th film?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2020/October. The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/The Caribbean Mystery.

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"Ben the Alligator"

"Ben the Alligator" is most interesting. It would be notable for appearing in at least 435 films "since 1909"! That's more than 3 times any HUMAN that I have ever heard of and more than a hell of a lot of behind-the-scenes crew, even in the Silent Era. And attaining the age of 250 years (214 years in 1909, then +36 to 1945) has got to be a record for ANY vertebrate! And what's the source for alligators living to be 600?!! (How do you even determine that?) The record that I've heard is 50 years.

Now, I'm not saying that I believe any of what is obviously PR hyperbole. But it would be interesting to find out any further information- was there actually one particular alligator that was being used in most films at the time? We know that some dogs and other animals such as lions had long film careers. The newspaper source doesn't give any additional information and I couldn't find anything online with several searches.CFLeon (talk) 05:36, 22 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]