Florida's other big reptile is a salt-loving crocodile, not an alligator
In 1875 William Temple Hornaday went to Florida to collect alligator hides and chased a rumoured big old gator at the head of Biscayne Bay. When he found it, grey and whale-sized, he realised it was a genuine crocodile. The American crocodile still shares Florida with the alligator, and prefers salty water.
It ranges farther than any other crocodile in the Americas, from South Florida and the big Caribbean islands to the coasts of Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Peru. Salt glands under the tongue let it thrive in brackish lagoons, mangroves, cays and even the open sea, something only the saltwater crocodile also does routinely. That tolerance let it colonise Caribbean and Pacific islands. The Caribbean's biggest population lives in an extremely salty Dominican lake, Lago Enriquillo, while Haiti's lone confirmed colony, in Etang Saumâtre, is close to disappearing from hunting and poaching.
Big males can exceed 7 metres and 1,000 kilograms, though mature males usually measure 2.9 to 4.1 metres and weigh up to about 400. Hatchlings start at roughly 27 centimetres and 60 grams. A captive male named Papillon reached 4.3 metres and 500 kilograms and was thought to be over 80 when he died. Compared with an alligator, this crocodile is paler and greyer, with a longer, narrower snout topped by a bump in front of the eyes, and it carries the most reduced bony back plates of any living crocodilian.
Its identity took a while to settle. Georges Cuvier described it in 1807 as the sharp-snout alligator, and Constantine Rafinesque argued in 1822 that it was really a crocodile; Hornaday's later name, Crocodylus floridanus, is now invalid. A Miocene fossil, Crocodylus checchiai, identified in 2020, suggests it shares an African ancestor with the Orinoco, Morelet's and Cuban crocodiles.
Although dangerous like any large crocodilian, it is less aggressive than some relatives. The IUCN lists it as vulnerable, and in the Everglades it serves as a federally threatened flagship species and a gauge of ecosystem health.
Source: American crocodile
