American Alligator
The Southeast's apex wetland predator, pulled back from endangered status to least concern.
The American alligator, Alligator mississippiensis, often called simply the gator, is a big crocodilian native to the Southeastern United States. It is one of just two living species in the genus Alligator and outgrows its only relative, the Chinese alligator. Gators live in freshwater marshes and cypress swamps from southern Oklahoma and Texas to North Carolina. As top predators they eat fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, and the holes they dig in wetlands give other creatures both wet and dry refuges, making them true ecosystem engineers. The species is the state reptile of Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Quick Facts
- Species
- mississippiensis
Facts from the source article.
Background
French zoologist François Marie Daudin first described the animal in 1801 as Crocodilus mississipiensis, and Georges Cuvier set up the genus Alligator for it in 1807, borrowing the English name that came from a Spanish word for lizard. Alligators and caimans together form the family Alligatoridae. Fossils matching the modern species occur through the Pleistocene, from 2.5 million to 11.7 thousand years ago; a 2020 study reassigned older Miocene skulls to other species and suggested the American alligator arose in the Middle Pleistocene. Hunting once devastated the population, and the gator was listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, but conservation work let numbers recover and it came off the endangered list in 1987.
Did You Know?
- An unverified male shot by Edward McIlhenny on Marsh Island, Louisiana in 1890 reportedly measured 5.84 m.
- A study at the Tom Yawkey Wildlife Center found growth stopped at about 43 years in males and 31 in females.
- The full alligator genome was published in 2014.
- Mothers can care for their young for up to 3 years after birth.
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