Alligator missing top half of its snout photographed in Florida

A Florida woman spotted an alligator missing the top half of its snout in Lake Hancock near Tampa, Fla.

Myra Evans was biking on a trail on Monday when she noticed an alligator swimming without half its snout in the nearby marsh. Evans then captured a photograph of the alligator, with the creature's bottom jaw and teeth peeking through the water.

"The alligator looked really horrible like he couldn't eat anything," Evers told ABC News. "I couldn't sleep last night thinking about it."

While the half-snout gator is certainly a strange sight, the injury itself isn't that uncommon.

"This kind of injury usually happens when alligators fight with each other, mostly for territorial or cannibalistic reasons," Gary Morse, a spokesperson for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission (FCC), told ABC News. "They tend to get aggressive toward one another, particularly males during mating season, which runs from the end of March to the beginning of June."

Morse said that Florida doesn't provide any funding or facilities to rehabilitate alligators since the species isn't endangered. Morse also noted that rescuing this alligator would be dangerous, and with injuries like this, there's often not much that can be done to assist them.

"Injuries happen to all sorts of wildlife and when dealing with nature, the laws of nature are not always kind," Morse said. "We can feel for these animals, but there are unfortunately times when there is nothing you can really do to help."