Chinese alligator
Alligator sinensis
— Where the name comes from
Alligator is an English mangling of the Spanish el lagarto, “the lizard”: that is how the first settlers in Florida heard the Spanish name the animal, and they made it one word. Sinensis says China. It is the only alligator that does not live in the Americas, and its closest relatives are on the far side of the Pacific.
— Facts
- Group
- Reptiles · Reptilia
- Order
- Crocodilians
- Habitat
- Ponds, canals and rice fields of the lower Yangtze
- Range
- Eastern China, Anhui province and neighbouring areas
- Size
- 1.5–2.1 m, 36–45 kg
- Diet
- Snails, molluscs, fish, insects, small mammals
- Lifespan
- 50 years
— Characteristics
- 01
It spends the winter dormant in burrows dug into the banks.
- 02
Its eyelids and back are reinforced with bony plates, and so is its belly.
- 03
It is far less aggressive than its American cousin.
— What sets it apart
Perhaps a hundred and fifty survive in the wild, in ponds scattered among the rice fields of Anhui, while Chinese farms hold more than twenty thousand: a species that survives almost entirely in captivity. Many scholars think it is the animal behind the Chinese dragon — it lives in water, disappears underground for months, returns in spring with the first storm and roars before the rain. In ancient China the dragon’s roar announced the monsoon.
