The American Alligator
Our Kiawah Neighbor
By Jack Kotz
T
here are about 500 American alligators living on Kiawah, roughly one for every four fulltime residents. We see them swimming lazily in our ponds, strolling on our golf courses, and
even crossing the roads. We know they are dark brown or grey-black with a lighter colored
underbelly and that mature males can be 11 feet long or more and weigh 500 pounds or more.
Alligators in the wild can live 30–50 years, which means that some alligators you see on Kiawah may
have been here even before development of our community began. Many of us know little beyond this,
but it is clear that they are a key species in our ecology. It is for this reason that the Kiawah Conservancy
is supporting research on alligator reproductive biology by a group led by Professor Lou Guillette, who is
profiled in the preceding article.
All About Alligators
American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) on the edge of a
Kiawah pond. (Photo by Jack Kotz)
Alligator on Kiawah. Note the small, black dots on the edges
of the upper and lower jaws. These are sensors that can detect
movement and possible prey. (Photo by Louis Guillette)
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The American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) is in the
order Crocodilia, which includes Nile crocodiles, gharials or
gavials, and caimans. There is an American crocodile, which is
found only in southern coastal Florida, but there are only two
species of alligators: the American and the Chinese. Alligators
first appeared on Earth about 37 million years ago, but the
name came from Spanish explorers in the New World who
called the animal el lagarto, which is Spanish for “the lizard.”
As we walk or bike around Kiawah we often see alligators in
the ponds with just their eyes and nostrils above the waterline.
They are lurking, just waiting for dinner to cross their path.
Alligators have small sensors on their upper and lower jaw—
seen as small black dots—that are sensitive to vibration. If
something is in the water nearby—fish, turtles, other reptiles,
birds, frogs, or small mammals such as a raccoon, a fawn, or
a pet dog—they can move swiftly to capture it.
Once a meal is captured, the alligator has powerful jaws
that can crush bones or a turtle shell. They pull the victim
underwater to drown it, but then they must come to the
surface to swallow it. Alligators have a hard pallet and a flap
at the back of the mouth that lets them sit in water with their
mouths open (unlike us) so they can capture and hold prey
and drown it without them drowning themselves. The flap
opens as they swallow their food.
The power of an alligator’s jaws is observed when the jaw
closes on prey, but the muscles opening the jaws are quite
weak. As you see in a photograph in this article, once the jaws
are taped shut briefly during the examination of the animal,
Naturally Kiawah