Reproduction
The breeding season begins in the spring. Although alligators have no vocal cords, males bellow loudly to attract mates and warn off other males during this time by sucking air into their lungs and blowing it out in intermittent, deep-toned roars. Male alligators are also known to use infrasound during their mating behavior. One of their routines is to engage in bellowing at this frequency while their head and tail are above the water. With their midsection very slightly submerged, they cause the surface of the water that is directly over their back to literally "sprinkle" from their infrasound bellowing, in a so-called "water dance". Recently it was discovered that on spring nights alligators gather in large numbers for group courtship, the so-called "alligator dances".
The female builds a nest of vegetation, sticks, leaves, and mud in a sheltered spot in or near the water. After she lays her 20 to 50 white eggs, about the size of a goose egg, she covers them with more vegetation, which heats as it decays, helping to keep the eggs warm. This differs from Nile crocodiles which lay their eggs in pits.
The temperature at which alligator eggs develop determines their sex. Those eggs which are hatched at a temperature of 34 °C (93 °F) or more become males, while those at a temperature of 30 °C (86 °F) or lower become female. The nests built on levees are warmer and thus produce males while the cooler nests of wet marsh produce females. The female will remain near the nest throughout the 65-day incubation period, protecting it from intruders. When the young begin to hatch the mother quickly digs them out and carries them to the water in her mouth.
The young are tiny replicas of adult alligators with a series of yellow bands around their bodies that serve as camouflage. Hatchlings gather into pods and are guarded by their mother and keep in contact with her through vocalizations. High-pitched distress calls signal danger and the mother will rush to their aid. Hisses signal aggression and non-distressed grunts keep each hatchling in contact with each other. Young alligators eat small fish, frogs, crayfish and insects. They are themselves preyed on by large fish, birds, raccons and adult alligators. Mother alligators eventually become more aggressive towards their young, which encourages them to disperse. Young alligators grow 3–8 in (7.6–20 cm) a year and reach adulthood at 6 ft (1.8 m).
Read more about this topic: American Alligator
Famous quotes containing the word reproduction:
“The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity.”
—Lewis Mumford (1895–1990)
“Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “Artist.””
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“Although Samuel had a depraved imagination—perhaps even because of this—love, for him, was less a matter of the senses than of the intellect. It was, above all, admiration and appetite for beauty; he considered reproduction a flaw of love, and pregnancy a form of insanity. He wrote on one occasion: “Angels are hermaphrodite and sterile.””
—Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867)