Alligators May Be THE Coolest Animal On Earth
Did you know that alligators can hold their breath underwater without coming up for air for roughly seven hours? They also have between sixty to seventy teeth when they are born and most are only six inches long. They go through 3,000 teeth during their lifetime. They go underwater for the winter (70 degrees and less outside) and can lower their heartbeat by one-two beats per minute to slow digestion so that they can go six months without food. When they come to the surface in the warmer months of the year, they eat chicken and they love marshmallows (the locals call it swamp crack). There are only about fifty albino alligators in the world and the one pictured below is kept in the Louisiana Swamp Tour building because outside in the sun her skin can burn. Her name is Sugar, she is seventeen years old, and she had two pupils in one eye which is incredibly rare. The other alligator pictured is named Dollar. He loves getting the back of his neck scratched. He is six weeks old currently and he was caught by our tour guide when he was two weeks old who is holding him (we also held him). The longest alligator that they have caught in the swamps we visited was fifteen feet long. If you measure the length in inches from the gator's nose to its eyes that is how many feet long they are. You can hunt alligator in the Louisiana swamps, it is legal. This year gator sold for $8/pound. The month that they hunt is during September. The locals that grew up around here including our tour guide allow their children to swim in the swamps because gators are less aggressive and more afraid of humans than crocodiles are. With that being said, their kids do still get bitten from time to time and they simply treat it like someone from Illinois would treat a dog bite. Not the biggest deal to them, they are used to it. There are no crocodiles in these swamps even though the water is part fresh and part salt. Crocodiles are typically and mostly found in Florida. Our tour guide has ten stitches in his right hand from hanging onto a marshmallow too long over the side of the boat, and a roughly ten foot gator came up and snatched it and got his hand with it. Luckily, the gator did not pull him underwater and he got to keep his hand. Female alligators lay eggs during the mating and reproduction season which is between May-July. If they get hungry enough, they will eat their own eggs if they are starving. Alligators grow up to two feet per year. Larger gators do in fact eat the smaller ones. All in all, there was a lot learned to day that was alligator specific.
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