A ring pulled from crocodile droppings in Australia has landed on a Central Florida jeweler’s workbench, thanks to a Gatorland expert who happened to be in the right place at a very strange moment. Savannah Boan, known around Orlando for her hands-on work with some of the park’s largest reptiles, uncovered the ring and brought it home in hopes of learning where it came from.
Boan is identified as a Gatorland expert, and according to FOX 35 Orlando, she uncovered the mysterious ring inside crocodile droppings while in Australia. She then brought the ring back to a Central Florida jeweler, who is expected to dig into its origin and history, the station reports.
The station has not reported who owns the ring, which crocodile was involved, or exactly how the piece ended up where Boan found it. Those details, along with whatever the jeweler eventually determines about the ring’s past, remain open questions for now.
Who Is Savannah Boan?
Boan holds the title of Crocodilian Enrichment Coordinator at Gatorland in Orlando, according to her own bio. She also serves as the International Ambassador for Gatorland Global, the park’s conservation arm, per the same bio.
Gatorland itself bills itself as a 125-acre theme park and wildlife preserve that has led the way in alligator safety and education since 1949, her bio notes. Boan’s press materials add that she works with roughly 2,500 crocodiles and alligators at the Florida preserve, and that she leads the park’s worldwide efforts to save alligators and crocodiles.
A Conservation Mission That Spans Continents
Gatorland Global was created in 2018 as a dedicated conservation program for the park, clickorlando.com reports, and it was formally established as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in 2025, per Boan’s bio. That global reach is apparently what put Boan in Australia in the first place — her conservation work is described as impacting endangered crocodiles in multiple countries, including Cuba, Australia and Morocco, according to her bio.
It is within that international conservation work that the ring turned up, tucked inside crocodile droppings on the other side of the world from Gatorland’s Orlando home base. Now the task of figuring out what the ring is, and where it has been, falls to the Central Florida jeweler Boan brought it to.
Not the First Strange Find Inside a Crocodilian
Odd discoveries inside crocodile and alligator digestive tracts are not without precedent. A saltwater crocodile in northern Queensland was found after death to have swallowed 25 plastic bags, a plastic wine cooler bag and a rubber float, according to a 2019 report from ABC News. Separately, crocodiles are known to swallow stones called gastroliths, which researchers say primarily aid digestion, per an explainer from the Institute for Environmental Research and Education.
For now, the ring’s next chapter rests with the jeweler examining it back in Central Florida.
