iHerp_Australia_-_November_-_December_2018

Above: Siamese Crocodile. Image by Dennis Thornton.

The Alligators of St. Augustine.

From humble roadside attraction to

leading centre for conservation and

education.

Vickie Lillo visits an enduring

institution in Florida.

E

arlier this year the St. Augustine Alligator Farm

Zoological Park in north Florida celebrated its

125th birthday. Today, the Alligator Farm is on the

National Register of Historic Places and welcomes

over 200,000 visitors annually. The main attraction

of the afternoon is feeding time, and while locals

and tourists alike begin to congregate around the

glass enclosure overlooking the ‘pit’, dozens of

American Alligators (Alligator mississipiensis) start

their own journey, easing off the banks surrounding

the lagoon and meandering slowly through the

water.

“Gators are ambush predators,” Kiersten Wallace, a

staff member, explains, as she tosses giant gator

‘biscuits’ to the waiting hordes. “Usually all you will

see near the water’s edge are the ears, the eyes

and nostrils. That’s all you can see exposed. Then,

with one big burst, they’ll grab their prey and roll

with it. They can’t chew; alligators can only ‘tear’, so

they clamp down with incredible bite strength and

then they roll.”

Rolling effectively drowns the prey item, and if it is

too large to be consumed in a single meal, main-

taining it beneath the water will allow it to rot, until

piece after piece, chunk after chunk can be ripped

off for a convenient snack. Kiersten sails another

pair of nuggets into the midst of the gators. A mass

of olive-black carnivores is patiently waiting near the

wooden platform where she is divvying out the

rations. “Alligators are also opportunistic, grabbing

food whenever the opportunity might arise, but only

if they are hungry. They spend most of their day

thermoregulating their body temperature, so in

actuality, they don’t require that much food. After a

good meal, they might not eat again for a week.”

When I visited here over 25 years ago, the delicacy

of choice was the Nutria, or Coypu (Myocastor

coypus), a huge rodent native to South America that

is about three times the size of a Muskrat.

Implicated in the destruction of wetlands in the

United States, Coypu were readily harvested in the

nearby swamps. Yet despite the meat being sold

for human consumption in eastern Europe,

according to Gen Anderson, the General Curator

of the Farm, it was found to be deficient in

vitamins A and E, which can affect the fertility of

the alligators. “Plus, we learned that the rodents

were killed with lead bullets. This led to unusually

high concentrations of lead in the alligators’

bodies. We didn’t learn that until later though,

because it takes a long time to show up.”

Now, the alligators are fed a diet of specially-

formulated biscuits made by Mazuri, a global

leader in exotic animal nutrition, notably zoo

species, and a division of Purina. Presently, even

visitors can share in the feeding excitement - shove

a quarter into one of the machines and a pellet

slides down a chute. Hungry alligators, using their

excellent hearing to tune in to the clink of that

25 - cent piece, often hover nearby, their maws

agape.

The reptiles begin to cluster around Kiersten,

sensing the caretaker has a special treat - their

preferred snack of frozen white rats. She plucks a

good-sized specimen from her bucket and dangles

it by the tail. The pink nose brushes across a couple

of teeth in a gator’s wide-open mouth. “C’mon,” she

jokingly chastises the animal. “You can make more

effort than that!”

Seconds later, the prodigious jaws snap shut and

the rat disappears down its gullet, as the gator

slides back down into the water.

St. Augustine has an impressive collection of

American Alligators, all of which are tracked with

state-of-the-art transponder chips inserted in the

neck, just underneath their nuchal scutes.

Considered an endangered species in the 60s and

70s, today gators are enjoying a resurgence due to

legislation enacted partly through the efforts of the

St. Augustine Farm. The Smithsonian’s National

Zoo considers the alligator to be a modern

‘conservation success story’, with over a million of

these reptiles now residing in both Florida and

Louisiana. Adult American Alligators comprise six to

eight hundred pounds of pure muscle, with one third

of the body weight concentrated in the formidable

tail that functions as a propeller in the water. The

Right: the author catches a ride on a replica

alligator. Image courtesy Vickie Lillo.

‘The alligator is a CONSERVATION

SUCCESS STORY, with MORE THAN A

MILLION now in both Florida and

Louisiana.’