But you'd think they'd at least try to explain how a reptile that size is able to live in a lake that far north.
share"As long as their nostrils don't freeze"
shareThat's about as ridiculous as most hollywood bullcrap, this is a mindless joke of a film for idiotic yaks
My Top 50 Films http://www.imdb.com/list/ls033211402/
Well, you might want to look up a special report type of video about whether there are living piranha's in the Lake Of The Ozarks, (state of Missouri). That lake is quite large, and generally ices over during the winters.
That said, there have been persistent reports of piranhas being caught by fishermen there.
That report I mentioned, (maybe from the Discovery Channel?), suggested that one of the number of springs that feed into the main lake come out of the ground much warmer than the ice covered lake. So, they went to one of the large springs during the winter to take temperature and oxygen level readings. To the researchers surprise, both of those readings were sufficient to support the (normally) tropical piranhas. The channel of warmer water was large, wide, and deep enough to allow a population of the piranhas to survive there over a winter. Note that I used the word "survive" rather than "thrive".
According to that report, the readings, and actual temperature testing with the species of piranhas believed to be in the lake, demonstrated the temperature and oxygen content was close to the limit of their survival. Just a few degrees colder, and the fish become sluggish, and essentially drown or die of being too cold. They do not swim around much when they are cold, and the lower level of exertion means they also require less oxygen and food to survive, but those conditions are very close to lethal. When the water is made just a few degrees colder, the fish stop swimming, do not stay 'vertical', and die.
Unfortunately, the researchers had also hoped to find at least one fish there, to indicate there was a population of them in the lake. They did not find any there, but there are many other springs. BTW, springs can also be underwater as well as those visible at the surface, so the lack of ice cover is less of a need for those springs where the lake is deeper.
So, could a crocodile survive through the winters that far north?
I do not believe that could be excluded.
However, the crocodiles would need an opening in the ice so they could periodically surface to breathe, but that could be a burrow in the dirt at the side of the lake, with an opening to air, and an underwater entrance. It would be very difficult to rule out the 'burrow' idea, or it could be a natural rock formation with cracks up to open air. As another part of a survivable location, it would need to be below the frost line as well...
It does not seem impossible, just unlikely.
So, suspension of disbelief is NOT required.
In the "real world" though, unless there is some slight but significant difference between native alligators and invasive crocodiles, one would
expect alligators would already be there, if survival was possible.
On the other hand, boat marinas can use a 'bubbler system' blowing compressed air to piping at the bottom of a lake to prevent ice forming in the marina area and damaging boats still in the water while ice forms over the main part of the lake. The air bubbles rise, and carry warmer water up to the surface above the piping, preventing ice from forming. Those systems are relatively recent, and alligators may not yet have made it to lakes using bubblers.
just sayin'
one chance in a million means there is a chance.