An 11 year old boy has had his arm bitten off by an alligator after it attacked him in a lake near New Orleans.

Devin Funck was playing with two girl friends in the small lake in Louisiana when the 12-foot (3m) long alligator grabbed him and dragged him under the water.

Quick thinking Devin managed to poke the large reptile in the eye and free himself, but the alligator had already bitten off his arm.

Local sheriff's deputies and state wildlife department officers later caught the alligator and managed to retrieve Devin’s arm from the reptile's stomach. They placed it in a cool box and rushed it to hospital where Devin was being treated.

It was the second alligator attack in the US in recent weeks. Last month a teenager also lost his arm when a similarly sized alligator attacked him while he was swimming in a canal in Florida.

Alligators, a member of the crocodile family, are common in the waterways and swamps of the southern states of the US, where well over a million can be found in Florida, Louisiana, Texas, and Georgia.

On Tuesday a wayward five-foot alligator managed to stop traffic in St Charles Parish, Louisiana, when it was found walking along a raised portion of an interstate highway.

No-one, except the farm-raised alligator who was hit by a car, was injured.

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