While the alligator, like most other wild animals, will doubtless defend itself when cornered, it will always flee from man if possible, and the writer has frequently waded and swam in ponds and lakes where alligators lived without the least fear of attack. This might not have been possible years ago when the animals were more numerous and had not been intimidated by man and his weapons.
Food.
The food of the adult alligator consists of fishes, birds, mammals, and possibly smaller individuals of its own species. The young eat small fish, frogs, insects, or worms.
If the animal be too large to swallow whole it is shaken and torn, the shaking being so vigorous that, according to Ditmars, the entrails of the prey may be thrown to a distance of twenty feet or more. Should two alligators seize the same prey at the same time they whirl about in opposite directions so violently that the prey is torn apart. This action may be illustrated by giving two small captive alligators a piece of tough meat; they hold on with bulldog tenacity, and each, folding its legs close to its body, will use its tail like a propeller until the animal whirls around with remarkable speed. The commotion that two ten-foot alligators would cause when thus struggling can easily be imagined. That a large alligator, if it tried, could easily drag under the water and drown a man or possibly a much larger animal is evident.
While the alligator has a valve-like fold of skin in its throat that enables it to open its mouth and crush its prey under water, it is said that it must raise its head above water in order to swallow its food. A young alligator on land will usually throw back its head when trying to swallow a large piece of meat, so that it may be simply this motion that brings the head of the alligator above the surface of the water.
Ditmars thus describes the fate of a dog that approached too near a very large alligator: “As a dog, weighing about fifty pounds, unwarily approached the edge of this creature’s tank, it was suddenly grasped and before completing its first yelp of terror was dragged beneath the surface. A few minutes later the twelve-foot saurian appeared at the top, holding the dead canine in its jaws. The dog was shifted about, amid the sound of breaking bones, and swallowed head first, and entire, after a few gulps.”
Size and Growth.
Although, years ago, alligators of fifteen feet length may have been common in favorable localities in the South, it is probable that few if any such monsters now exist. A twelve-foot alligator, owing to its great girth, is a huge animal and but few of this size are to be found in captivity. The largest specimen the writer has ever seen is the one in the Bronx Zoo, which is barely thirteen feet in length. At hatching the alligator is about eight inches in length.
Clarke ([17]) says: “The largest specimen I saw measured twelve feet in length; and none of the many hunters and natives of Florida I have met have seen any longer than thirteen feet. All the hunters agree that it is only the males that acquire the great size; no one had ever seen a female that measured over eight feet, and the majority are not over seven. The male has a heavier, more powerful head, and during the breeding season especially is more brilliantly colored.”
It is a very common belief, even among those who should be most familiar with their habits, that the growth of the alligator is remarkably slow, so that a large specimen may be described by the exhibitor as more than a century old. The same dealer in alligators quoted above says upon this subject: “You can figure about two inches a year to their growth.” He also says: “We judge that an alligator about twenty-five to thirty years old will breed.” Even scientific writers of reputation have not been free from this error in their writings. That the alligator may live to an extreme age, as seems to be true of some of the tortoises, is quite possible, and it is probable that after reaching a length of twelve or fifteen feet the growth is very slow.