Natural History: American Alligator

The Monday after our first field trip to Caw Caw, I got to revisit the site with my plant class. And in addition to seeing various plants, the warmer weather made up for the absence of a "gator" in the previous trip. There I encountered the first Crocodilian I've ever seen in the wild! (speaks someone from a metropolitan city...) In stead of being scared to death like I imagined I'd do, I was actually super excited and took as many pictures as I could when the professor urged us to hurry up and walk around it.

I so wished I could take a picture with both me and the alligator in it; my friends would think it's so cool!

 



This species of alligator, the only species around here, is the American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis). It is one of the 8 species of alligators that exist. Alligator mississippiensis is naturally distributed only in the United States, and only in the south eastern United States--in Alabama, Arkansas, North & South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas. So you'd think people would not want to eat them, but apparent that's not true... Anyways, here's a distribution map:

Their habitats are primarily fresh water swamps and marshes, but also inland waters--rivers, lakes, and small bodies of waters. They can occasionally can also be found in brackish water, but alligators can only tolerate salinity for a short duration. Unlike crocodiles, alligators lack buccal salt-secreting glands. This one I saw, like a typical alligator, was on the fresh water side of the old rice bed.

 



The alligator was rather small, about a meter long if I have to make an estimation, but certainly not the size of a baby. Young alligators have bright yellow crossbands which darkens as the animals age. They reach maturity at around 1.8m. I can't see any bright yellow on this one, so I think it's an adolescent transforming into an adult.

What do they eat? This is another to-my-surprise moment. My impression of crocodilian diet comes from watching crocodiles taking on antelopes and zebras during the migration in Africa, but there aren't many of those here. Juvenile alligators eat a combination of small invertebrates-- like insects (!), and small fish and frogs. Even adults would eat fish, turtles and other reptiles, birds (!) in addition to larger preys. Their feeding activity is dependent on water temperature. If the water temperature is below 20 to 23°C (68 to 73°F), they stop foraging.

The one I saw did not move once since I saw he/ she, just basking in the sun to get energy. Apparently, the only other way to tell their sexes besides size is by messing with their cloaca, which I happily stayed away from. But you can learn more here: http://crocodilian.com/crocfaq/faq-8.html#9.1