Police caught a young alligator sunbathing near a pond in Long Island, N. Y. on Saturday. According to published reports, a woman leading a nature group in the Huntington part of Long Island discovered the alligator and alerted the police.

Watching survival shows on various media outlets can really prove useful in real life situations. It proved lifesaving for a young Scottish man who got lost in an Australian national park. He survived two days without water and food merely by using survival tips he watched on nature shows on television to stay alive.

A beaver was spotted in New York City Wednesday for the first time on record since the early 1800s. Earlier this week the male beaver's twig and mud home, or "beaver lodge," was seen on the bank of the Bronx River, but no one had set eyes on the beaver himself until biologists from the Bronx Zoo videotaped it swimming in the river on Wednesday. Beavers were common in the early days of New York City, but they disappeared over time, mostly due to trappers who were interested in their fur.

he city manager of a small Florida town announced his decision to pursue a sex-change operation, citing his life-long desire to become a woman. Steve Stanton, who has been the city manager of Largo, a 76,000-resident town on the west coast of Florida for 14 years, says his decision to change genders will not affect his ability to perform his job as a civil servant.

The skeletons of two prehistoric humans found buried locked in an embrace last week will continue to keep the heart-warming pose this Valentine's day. Archaeologists in Italy, who unearthed the rare Neolithic era burial, are planning to scoop out the entire section of the earth to preserve the integrity of the pose. "We will work to keep them together," Elena Menotti, the archaeologist who led the dig told the AP. "Removing the turf in one piece will preserve the position and allow us to collect more data on the burial. ''