The Bristol Crocodile is the best known modern animal mystery in the city. In 2014 the bus driver Jolyon Rea, driving over the Bedminster roundabout, saw something in his wing mirror that he took for a crocodile swimming in the River Avon. He stopped and called the police. He later said he knew what he saw and that logs do not swim against the tide.
A second sighting turned out to be a hoax. The police, who turned up at Snuff Mills in riot gear to search for the animal, drew so much ridicule that the search was suspended. Biologists consulted said the city's underground tunnels and waterways could in theory hide a large reptile that lived on fish and waterfowl, though the animal found at Chew Valley Reservoir in 2017 was only a baby caiman. More photos have since been taken. A man named Jimmy Edge photographed what he thought was a crocodile's head and nose in the water near St Philip's footbridge in January 2026.
Bristol Zoo Project told a reporter it had no escaped crocodiles between 2014 and 2026, and Wessex Water said it had no record of crocodiles in the sewers. The city treats it half as a joke, but the original driver has stood by his account for years.
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