Alligator

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Description

An average adult American alligator's weight and length is 360 kg (790 lb) and 4.0 m (13.1 ft), but they sometimes grow to 4.4 m (14 ft) long and weigh over 450 kg (990 lb). The largest ever recorded, found in Louisiana, measured 5.84 m (19.2 ft).^[4] The Chinese alligator is smaller, rarely exceeding 2.1 m (6.9 ft) in length. In addition, it weighs considerably less, with males rarely over 45 kg.

No average lifespan for an alligator has been measured. In 1937, a one-year-old specimen was brought to the Belgrade Zoo inSerbia from Germany. It is now 76 years old.^[6] Although no valid records exist about its date of birth, this alligator, officially named Muja, is considered the oldest alligator living in captivity.

Habitat

American alligators are found in the southeast United States: all of Florida and Louisiana, the southern parts of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, coastal South and North Carolina, East Texas, the southeast corner of Oklahoma, and the southern tip of Arkansas. According to the 2005 Scholastic Book of World Records, Louisiana has the largest alligator population.^[8] The majority of American alligators inhabit Florida and Louisiana, with over a million alligators in each state. Southern Florida is the only place where both alligators and crocodiles live side by side.^{[citation needed]}Alligators are native only to the United States and China.^{[citation needed]}

American alligators live in freshwater environments, such as ponds, marshes, wetlands, rivers, lakes, and swamps, as well as in brackish environments.^[9] When they construct alligator holes in the wetlands, they increase plant diversity and provide habitat for other animals during droughts.^[10] They are, therefore, considered an important species for maintaining ecological diversity in wetlands.^[11]Further west, in Louisiana, heavy grazing by nutria (coypu) and muskrat are causing severe damage to coastal wetlands. Large alligators feed extensively on nutria, and provide a vital ecological service by reducing nutria numbers.

The Chinese alligator currently is found only in the Yangtze River valley^{[citation needed]} and is extremely endangered, with only a few dozen believed to be left in the wild. Indeed, far more Chinese alligators live in zoos around the world than can be found in the wild. Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge in southern Louisiana has several in captivity in an attempt to preserve the species. Miami MetroZoo in Florida also has a breeding pair of Chinese alligators.

Behavior

Although the alligator has a heavy body and a slow metabolism, it is capable of short bursts of speed, especially in very short lunges. Alligators' main prey are smaller animals they can kill and eat with a single bite. They may kill larger prey by grabbing it and dragging it into the water to drown. Alligators consume food that can not be eaten in one bite by allowing it to rot, or by biting and then spinning or convulsing wildly until bite-sized chunks are torn off. This is referred to as a "death roll". Critical to the alligator's ability to initiate a death roll, the tail must flex to a significant angle relative to its body. An alligator with an immobilized tail cannot perform a death roll.Large male alligators are solitary territorial animals. Smaller alligators can often be found in large numbers close to each other. The largest of the species (both males and females) defend prime territory; smaller alligators have a higher tolerance for other alligators within a similar size class.

Most of the muscle in an alligator's jaw evolved to bite and grip prey. The muscles that close the jaws are exceptionally powerful, but the muscles for opening their jaws are comparatively weak. As a result, an adult human can hold an alligator's jaws shut bare-handed. It is common today to use several wraps of duct tape to prevent an adult alligator from opening its jaws when being handled or transported.^[14]

Alligators are generally timid towards humans and tend to walk or swim away if one approaches. This has led some people to the practice of approaching alligators and their nests in a manner that may provoke the animals into attacking. In Florida, feeding wild alligators at any time is illegal. If fed, the alligators will eventually lose their fear of humans and will learn to associate humans with food, thereby becoming a greater danger to people.

Diet

The type of food eaten by alligators depends upon their age and size. When young, alligators eat fish, insects, snails, crustaceans, and worms. As they mature, progressively larger prey is taken, including larger fish such as gar, turtles, and various mammals, particularly nutria and muskrat,^[9] as well as birds, deer, and other reptiles.^[16][17] Their stomachs also often contain gizzard stones. They will even consume carrion if they are sufficiently hungry. In some cases, larger alligators are known to ambush dogs, Florida panthers and black bears, making it the apex predator throughout its distribution. In this role as a top predator, it may determine the abundance of prey species, including turtles and nutria.As humans encroach into their habitat, attacks are few but not unknown. Alligators, unlike the large crocodiles, do not immediately regard a human upon encounter as prey, but may still attack in self-defense if provoked.

Reproduction

In summer, the female builds a nest of vegetation where the decomposition of the vegetation provides the heat needed to incubate the eggs. The sex of the offspring is determined by the temperature in the nest and is fixed within seven to 21 days of the start of incubation. Incubation temperatures of 86 °F (30 °C) or lower produce a clutch of females; those of 93 °F (34 °C)} or higher produce entirely males. Nests constructed on leaves are hotter than those constructed on wet marsh, so the former tend to produce males and the latter, females. The natural sex ratio at hatching is five females to one male. Females hatched from eggs incubated at 86 °F weigh significantly more than males hatched from eggs incubated at 93 °F.The mother defends the nest from predators and assists the hatchlings to water. She will provide protection to the young for about a year if they remain in the area. The largest threat to the young are adult alligators. The baby alligator's egg tooth helps it get out of its egg during hatching time. Predation by adults on young can account for a mortality rate of up to 50% in the first year. In the past, immediately following the outlawing of alligatorhunting, populations rebounded quickly due to the suppressed number of adults preying upon juveniles, increasing survival among the young alligators.Alligators generally mature at a length of 6 feet (1.8 m). The mating season is in late spring. In April and May, alligators form so-called "bellowing choruses". Large groups of animals bellow together for a few minutes a few times a day, usually one to three hours after sunrise. The bellows of male American alligators are accompanied by powerful blasts of infrasound. Another form of male display is a loud head-slap. Recently, on spring nights alligators were found to gather in large numbers for group courtship, the so-called "alligator dances".

Anatomy

They have muscular, flat tails that propel them while swimming.Alligators, much like birds, have been shown to exhibit unidirectional movement of air through their lungs. Most other amniotes are believed to exhibit bidirectional, or tidal breathing. For a tidal breathing animal, such as a mammal, air flows into and out of the lungs through branching bronchi which terminate in small dead-end chambers called alveoli. As the alveoli represent dead-ends to flow, the inspired air must move back out the same way it came in. In contrast, air in alligator lungs makes a circuit, moving in only one direction through the parabronchi. The air first enters the outer branch, moves through the parabronchi, and exits the lung through the inner branch. Extensive vasculature around the parabronchi are where oxygen exchange takes place.

The two kinds of white alligators are albino and leucistic. These alligators are practically impossible to find in the wild. They could survive only in captivity and are few in number. The Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans has leucistic alligators found in a Louisiana swamp in 1987.

Human uses

Alligators are raised commercially for their meat and skin, which is used for bags and shoes. They also provide economic benefits through the ecotourism industry. Visitors may take swamp tours, in which alligators are a feature. Their most important economic benefit to humans may be the control of nutria and muskrats. Louisiana spends millions of dollars of bounty money to control nutria.^{[citation needed]} This service is provided by alligators.

Alligator meat is also consumed by humans. The Archbishop of New Orleans ruled in 2010 that for purposes of Catholic church discipline in relation to abstention from meat, the flesh of the alligator is characterised as fish.