Alligator

American Alligator ( Alligator mississipiensis )

The Real alligators ( Alligator ) are a genus of the family of alligators ( Alligatoridae ). Within these they are the Caymans ( Caimaninae ) compared with the only extant representative of the subfamily Alligatorinae.

Features

In contrast to the Caymans have real alligators a broad flat snout and a bony nasal septum. They have also on the neck to six conical scales.

Way of life

Alligator prefer males outside the mating season, large open, deep waters, while the females flatter, prefer smaller quiescent waters. During the mating season the males defend their territories by barking sounds, hitting her head on the water and fights with competitors.

True alligators crocodiles are those whose distribution area farthest reaches in North America and China to the north temperate latitudes, so that they would confront as a single crocodiles in winter with frost. They spend the winter buried in the muddy banks or in deep water with a significantly reduced metabolism, but must regularly come to the surface to breathe and bask in the sun on warmer days at the shore. The American alligator can even overwinter in over freezing waters, where his body remains in the water, while the snout to breathe through the ice goes.

System

The genus Alligator was formed about 38-26 million years ago in the Oligocene in North America. A representative from this period was Alligator prenasalis. In the Miocene Alligator mcgrewi, Alligator olseni and also the first Alligator mississippiensis lived. From the Pliocene alligator was described mefferdi. The Alligator sinensis appears in the Pleistocene.

• † Alligator prenasalis ( Loomis, 1904)
• † Alligator mcgrewi Schmidt, 1941
• † Alligator olseni White, 1942
• † Alligator mefferdi Mook, 1946

Today there are two types:

• American Alligator ( Alligator mississippiensis ( Daudin, 1802) )
• Chinese alligator ( Alligator sinensis Fauvel, 1879)