“We put him in deep water and he would roll over and capsize like a boat,” said [Russ] Johnson, [president of the Phoenix Herpetological Society]. “When competition for food came, all the other alligators would win. He’d be the last to the chow line.”

This past year, doctors at The Core Institute Center for Orthopedic Research and Education came up with a groundbreaking prosthetic tail to better the quality of life for Mr. Stubbs.

“We’ve never made a prosthetic for an animal before,” Marc Jacofsky, the executive vice president for research and development for The Core Institute, told ABC News. “Our motto is ‘Keep life in motion.’ It just feels really good to apply that to an animal that’s in need.”

The Core Institute partnered with Midwestern University, which does research in the anatomy of an alligator, to ensure the prosthetic would match the density of a real tail. Even though the research and development was carefully calculated, Jacofsky said the team has had to make several adjustments after monitoring Mr. Stubbs’s reaction to a prototype.

“One of the early strapping systems to secure the tail pressed on his legs and he wasn’t able to walk properly,” said Jacofsky. “There are always unforeseen challenges that come up. We anticipate this whenever we are breaking new ground, and the key is to engineer around them.”

The prosthetic tail, donated by The Core Institute, was developed over a period of three months. The project cost around $6,000. Johnson said believes with the new tail, the alligator could live up to 80 years. Without help, it could have been 20.