An alligator's bite is crushing, yet a strip of tape can hold its jaws shut
Adult American alligators once held the record for the strongest bite ever measured in a laboratory, up to 13,172 newtons. The muscles that open their jaws, though, are so weak that handlers can keep a captured gator's mouth closed by hand or with tape. The species also nearly vanished before bouncing back.
Native to the wetlands of the southeastern United States, the gator is the larger of the two living alligator species, the other being Chinese. Most mature males grow to about 3.4 metres and 360 kilograms, while females usually stop near 2.6 metres. Tall tales abound: in 1890 Edward McIlhenny reported a 5.84-metre male on Marsh Island, Louisiana, but left the carcass on a muddy bank because it was too heavy to move, so no proof survives. Crocodilians were long assumed to grow all their lives, yet a South Carolina study running from 1979 to 2015 found growth stopping at about 43 years in males and 31 in females.
Jaws and teeth change with age. Hatchlings have needle-like teeth and narrow snouts for insects and fish; adults carry 74 to 80 sturdier teeth and broader snouts for turtles and bigger prey. As apex predators they eat fish, birds, mammals and even other alligators. They also engineer their surroundings, digging alligator holes that give other creatures pockets of both wet and dry habitat.
Courtship is loud. Alligators bellow to claim territory and find mates, and males send infrasound to attract females. Unusually for reptiles, mothers guard their nests of mud and vegetation, carry hatchlings to water in their mouths, and protect the young, born with yellow bands, for a year or more.
Hunting drove the species onto the endangered list in 1973. Protection worked so well that it was taken off in 1987, and the IUCN now rates it Least Concern. Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi all claim it as their state reptile. Its genus name, Alligator, coined by Georges Cuvier in 1807, comes from the Spanish el lagarto, the lizard.
Source: American alligator
