What happens to an alligator that loses its tail?

For most, it's game over. But not for Mr. Stubbs.

The alligator has a new lease on life thanks in part to 3D-printing technology. It took a team effort by researchers at the CORE Institute in Phoenix and Midwestern University to design a better kind of replacement tail. Before, that required making a mold of an actual alligator's tail, which was expensive. But 3D technology has made it more practical.

Mr. Stubbs lost his posterior when he was owned by a man who had an illegal alligator facility, says Dan Marchand, executive curator of the nonprofit Phoenix Herpetological Society.

"He basically had purchased a new alligator and it was smaller than his others, and he had placed it into an enclosure where the other alligators thought they were being fed something, and they actually bit off his original tail," Marchand tells Here & Now's Lisa Mullins.

Interview Highlights

On how researchers are tweaking the tail's design over time

"They actually made three different versions of it — one was short and stubby, one was what they believe the correct length was and one was actually made a little bit longer, so it gave them the ability to try different things with the tail to see what the reaction would be and the things that would happen by changing some of the dimensions.

"Based on his size and his weight, they basically took the dimensions from alligators similar in size. So they had a really good idea of what it should have been. So they created a tail exactly, based off those dimensions, what they thought it should be. But then they wanted to play with the concept of, what happens if the tail was a little bit shorter? What would it do, and if the tail is a little longer what would it do?"